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Adam’s Daughters. Frontispiece. 



ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 



JULIA MacNAIR WRIGHT. 

II 


I wnndsr If in earning years, ah little realm, mine 
ayes 

Shall see ahave thy turf-built raaf the waving 
harvests rise, virgil, ecl. i. 


SEP 1 1892 

2 r ^ ri, 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 



V 



COPYRIGHT, 1892, 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 


''U/hn can find a uirtuaus woman? for her 
price is far aboue rubies . . . . She is like the 
merchants' ships ; she bringeth her feed from afar . . , 
She considereth a held and buyeth it; with the 
fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard . , , , 
Strength and honor are her clothing; and she shall 
rejoice in time to come . . , , Give her of the 
fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise 
her in the gates." 








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PREFACE. 


What shall we do for a living?” is a prob- 
lem proposed to many women, maids, wives, 
and widows. The penalty waiting upon a fail- 
ure in the solution is generally, to put it in its 
mildest terms, pauperism. Yet this momentous 
question is often sprung upon women suddenly, 
when no previous training has capacitated them 
for the solving thereof. 

How three maids and their mother sought to 
unravel this enigma, how they failed, and how 
they succeeded, is set forth in this true tale for 
the help of their sisters. 

Most of those who have busied themselves in 
philanthropic work have been appalled by the 
way in which women called to self-support crowd 
into the over-full ranks of the city’s workers, 
abandoning the friends and the healthful envi- 
ronment of rural homes, in the hope that the 
marts of the city will give them easier work and 
higher wages. In scarcely one case in a thou- 
sand is such expectation realized. 

This book has been written with an earnest 
desire to deter some young women from a step 
so surrounded with danger and difficulty ; to 


6 


PREFACE. 


show the advantages and possibilities of rural 
life, the dark side of the city, which is often the 
only side seen by the city’s toilers. Not all girls 
from the country or in the country can have the 
advantages enjoyed by the heroines of this story ; 
they were perhaps exceptional, but the story is 
true in all its main points, and that very excep- 
tional side of the experiences commended them 
to my attention. 

Is there hope and help then only for those 
fortunate enough to secure unusual offices of 
friendship and almost romantically happy op- 
portunities? Nothing is too difficult for Chris- 
tian wisdom and Christian charity, for workers 
whose hands and heads, whose hearts and purses 
are consecrated to serving God in the person of 
suffering humanity. But the cities are crowded 
with women who are the children of the city, 
who have been born and bred within the brick 
walls. What of them? They came from no 
Eden garden-land, and no such land lures their 
return. Daughters of Lazarus who live and die 
within a stone’s throw of Dives’ gate — what, we 
say, of them? The subject is too large to be 
united with another theme. Only the side of 
the country girls, of Adam’s daughters, has been 
treated in this book ; the daughters of Lazarus 
would demand a volume for themselves. 

THE AUTHOR. 


Gontrnts 


CHAPTER I. 

Bees and Honeysuckles page ii 

CHAPTER II. 

A Garret Conclave 28 

CHAPTER III. 

Lightning from a Clear Sky 44 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Little Brown House 60 

CHAPTER V. 

Administering a Defeat 78 

CHAPTER VI. 

“ Frost’s Extremity ” 95 

CHAPTER VII. 

Wherein Van Fails Ignominiously in 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Myra Goes to Seek her Fortune 128 

CHAPTER IX. 

Myra has Varied Experiences 143 


8 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER X. 

Something New Under the Sun 158 

CHAPTER XL 

A Committee of Ways and Means 174 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Day of Rest 190 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Unde James and Unde Daniel 204 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Chivalry of Unde James 222 

CHAPTER XV. 

Nancy Tempest, at Your Service 239 

CHAPTER XVI. 

“ Gentlemen’s Furnishing and Ready Made ” 257 

CHAPTER XVII. 

In Winter Blasts 274 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Street Boys and Street Beggars 292 

CHAPTER XIX. 

The Hegira of Uncle James 307 

CHAPTER XX. 

A Good Fight — 323 


CONTENTS. 


9 


CHAPTER XXL 

The Hand of Mercy *_ 340 

CHAPTER XXII. 

“ All Ye are Brethren ” 356 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Welcome Home! 373 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Wherein Certain Sheaves are Gathered 388 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Good News from a Far Country 397 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

The Bountiful Mother _ 415 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

The Return of the Age of Gold 43 1 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

From Storm to Shine 445 



ADAMS DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER I. 

BEES AND HONEYSUCKLES. 

“To such sweet signs might time have flowed 
In golden currents on 
Ere from the garden, man’s first abode, 

The glorious guests were gone.” 

“ Poplar Rise that is what the “ Three 
Milbury Maids ” had named their homestead, 
lying fair to the sun and the southwest breezes 
in one of the richest farming districts of Penn- 
sylvania. 

“ It is just the name for the place !” said the 
“ Maids ” to Uncle Aaron. 

“ Maybe,” replied that cautious old farmer, 
‘‘ but in my early days no one ever thought of 
naming farms ; it was full undertaking enough 
to name the horses and work oxen. Now-a- 
days all the cows, and even the houses, have to 
be named, it seems. A’ n’t it rather of a foreign 
notion ?” 

'‘Why, uncle!” cried his nieces in chorus, 
" we must live somewhere, and if one just says 


12 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


‘ Milbury Farm,’ it might be the other farm, you 
know. What name could be better than Poplar 
Rise? Doesn’t the farm stand on the slope, 
and are there not six poplars on the roadside 
before the house ? It can be seen for miles and 
miles.” 

“ Have it any way you like,” said Uncle 
Aaron; “the place is yours anyhow. Nobody 
has a better right to name it.” 

“Oh now, Aaron!” said widow Milbury, the 
mother of the maids. 

“Oh, uncle !” cried the maids. 

“ It is so,” said the farmer, repeating an oft- 
told tale. “ Adam and I were twins and we had 
all things in common. ‘ The early Christians ’ 
the dominie used to call us, and we had this 
farm together undivided ; and when Adam died 
he said, ‘ It is all right, Aaron my brother ; you ’ll 
leave all you have to the girls ; so I ’m content.’ 
And of course that is the way it will be. I have 
done the best I could for Adam’s daughters, and 
the farm will be yours by-and-by.” 

“ But what will we do with a farm ? You 
wont want us to sell what was great-grandfather 
Milbury ’s. And what can we do with a farm ?” 

“Ah,” said Uncle Aaron, rubbing his chin, 
rough with three days’ growth — “ ah, what will 
you do with it ? That ’s a puzzler !” 

Whenever the subject of the ownership of 


BEES AND HONEYSUCKLES. 


3 


the farm came up, which it did about once a 
month, the good farmer recording in it his fealty 
to his dead brother and loving to turn conversa- 
tion to it, this was the way in which it always 
ended : What would they do with the Milbury 
farm, two hundred acres of the most beautiful 
and well-cultivated land, with that comfortable 
farmhouse seated on the rise and the great Penn- 
sylvania barn towering behind it ? 

This query, put by Rachel Vandyke, Myra, 
and Theodora Milbury, was regarded as a mild 
little joke. The days, months, and years flowed 
so tranquilly at Poplar Rise, with Uncle Aaron 
administering the farm and widow Milbury the 
domicile, that it seemed as* if life and ease and 
good cheer must flow on there for ever like the 
brook. 

But there came a day when the question of 
the future of Van, Myra, and Teddie, as the 
girls were called, was seriously taken up and 
discussed. It was on a day in the first week in 
June, and Aunt Harriet Proctor was at the farm 
visiting for a few days. She was only aunt by 
courtesy, for she had been the wife of Grandma 
Milbury ’s step-brother. She was the family 
boast and also their autocrat whenever she chose 
to assume that function, for Aunt Harriet’s hus- 
band had served four terms in Congress and 
Aunt Harriet had written for the papers and 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


14 

even a book or two, and was at the head of vari- 
ous societies and philanthropic movements and 
abreast with the leading thoughts of the day. 

Aunt Harriet lived in Boston and saw her 
Pennsylvania friends but seldom. She was mak- 
ing a tour of the family homes now, and mam- 
ma Milbury was filled with a praiseworthy anxi- 
ety that such a woman as Aunt Harriet should 
think well of the three “ Milbury maids.” 

Aunt Harriet had been at the house nearly a 
week, and was now seated on the front porch 
with mamma Milbury. Mamma Milbury was 
knitting ; Aunt Harriet, with her shapely white 
hands folded in her lap, regarded the goodly 
view of “fields which the Lord had blessed;” 
the fragrance of new-mown hay, blossoming 
bean-fields, and gardens full of flowers and labi- 
ate herbs, came to her as she sat on the porch. 
The porch was framed on strong white fluted 
pillars and draped like a bower with honey- 
suckles and climbing-roses, now in ample bloom. 

In an open window above the porch sat Van 
Milbury darning the family stockings. She had 
a large basket of stockings beside her, just come 
from the wash ; she had a little basket of darn- 
ing-cotton, yarn, and needles, and as she finished 
each pair of stockings she folded them up in the 
tidiest manner possible and laid them on the 
wide window-sill, for Van was orderly. Now 


BEES AND HONEYSUCKLES. 1 5 

any girl darning stockings, especially on a bril- 
liant summer morning, feels self-sacrificing, vir- 
tuous, and praiseworthy, and not in a humor to 
be found fault with. 

Van seated thus could not avoid hearing her 
mother say to Mrs. Proctor, “ Well now. Aunt 
Harriet, what do you think of Adam’s daugh- 
ters?” It was a habit in the Milbury family 
always to refer the ownership of these three 
maids rather to the dead father than to the 
living mother, and it was a habit in which the 
mother acquiesced; it made the three girls in 
some sort Adam’s monument. 

The subject was not a particularly private 
one, and there was no reason why Van should 
leave her work or her place before Aunt Harriet 
replied, but in the tone of one bestowing faint 
praise, “ I think they are very agreeable, bright, 
healthy, nice-looking girls.” 

“ Why,” exclaimed mamma Milbury, “ it 
sounds, Aunt Harriet, as if you did not approve 
of them some way !” 

“ I approve of them,” replied Aunt Harriet ; 
“ I think much of them ; but I do n’t approve, 
niece Milbury, of the way in which they have 
been brought up.” 

“ Aunt Harriet,” cried the good mother, more 
and more dismayed, “we have done our very 
best for them, Aaron and I. I am sure no girls 


l6 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

have prettier manners or are more neatly 
dressed ; and they went to school just as long as 
they wanted to go, and we bought them a piano, 
though none of them take to music, though Ted- 
die plays her accompaniments very well, and 
they are all church members. What is wrong 
about their bringing up ?” 

“ The question which I ask,” said Aunt Har- 
riet, “ is, what do these girls know that is of 
really practical value? What can they do? 
What are they doing? As church members, 
niece Milbury, what are they doing ? When I 
heard that one and another of them had come 
out on the Lord’s side, uniting with the church 
of her fathers, I thanked God for the answer to 
many prayers. I hoped, when I came here, to 
find these girls’ hearts on fire with the fresh and 
beautiful zeal of early Christian life, their abili- 
ties consecrated to active service of the Master. 
I have lived where I have seen much need of 
philanthropic religious work, where I have met 
men and women of a living Christianity, and so 
perhaps I have become accustomed to looking 
for the Christ-likeness in those who bear Christ’s 
name, the likeness in this especial particular, 
that they shall ‘ go about doing good,’ busy, 
busy about their Father’s business from child- 
hood to old age. This, niece Milbury, is not a 
burden but a joy. And now, as you have opened 


BEES AND HONEYSUCKLES. 17 

this discussion about the girls, let us go back to 
the first question and take it in its lowest appli- 
cation, What are the girls doing? What do 
they know how to do?” 

“ Why, they know as much as other girls 
know and can do as much as others do,” said 
Mrs. Milbury in a vexed tone. “ They are indus- 
trious. You do n’t see them lounging about idle.” 

“ True, I do not, and for that very reason I 
think it a pity so much good will and good 
ability should go to waste. But, my dear niece, 
let us look at this question of your girls. I have 
taken it to heart. What do they know that is 
practical? Here are three girls without a bro- 
ther. What can they do for a living? Have 
they any business or trade at their finger-ends 
or in their heads? No. You would not bring 
up boys so. Why should we leave girls in a 
more helpless and defenceless condition than 
boys, who are by nature better provided for fend- 
ing for themselves?” 

“I don’t know just what you mean. We 
have not felt poor enough to make the girls learn 
trades, and we have never wanted them to go 
away from home. Why should we? We are 
well-to-do. Brother Daniel Milbury talks some- 
thing like that now and then ; but what does 
Daniel know about girls ? He has only six boys 
in his family.” 


Adam’s Daughters. 


2 


8 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ I know something about girls,” said Aunt 
Harriet. I have brought up four, and I never 
felt easy until each one of them was well able to 
support herself if necessary. I think girls ought 
to have a fair chance. Suppose your girls were 
left poor and orphans, tell me, what could they 
do ?” 

“ Well — now — ” said Mrs. Milbury reluctant- 
ly, “ I suppose they — could marry.” 

But who wants a girl to be driven to marry 
for a home ? Not you. We scorn or condemn 
marrying for money or a title. Is it any better 
to put a girl in such a position that she must 
marry to be supported, where otherwise she 
would not ? These lower motives for marriage 
are at the root of much domestic discord and 
much separation and divorce. You did not mean 
that.” 

“ There are plenty of things my girls can 
do,” said Mrs. Milbury, rousing up. “ They help 
me in the house. It is true, I keep a strong, 
capable girl, and all the milk goes to the cream- 
ery ; but the girls make all the preserves and 
cake and desserts, and keep the parlor and halls 
in order and their own rooms tidy. They do 
their own plain-sewing and mending, make over 
their common dresses, and fix over their second- 
best hats.” 

“Yes, yes. They are not lazy ; their mother 


BEES AND HONEYSUCKLES. 


19 


is too sensible for that. Their rooms are charm- 
ingly neat. But what I ask is, What can they do 
that is practical ? What object have they in life ? 
God did not make human souls to live objectless, 
as cattle. The French say we should do some- 
thing to show ‘ the reason of our being.’ What 
are the girls doing for the church or for the 
world ? Let us return to that. They are Chris- 
tians. Are they teaching in Sunday-school, 
working in the Missionary Society, helping in 
the Temperance Union work, or in the Young 
Women’s Christian Association ?” 

“ The girls do n’t seem to take to the ‘ Young 
Women’s Christian Association.’ They say they 
don’t see the least bit of use in it,” said Mrs. 
Milbury ; and Van in her window echoed the 
words in her heart. And how it came back to 
her in after days ! “ And the older ladies of the 

church seem to get on with all the work of the 
Missionary Society and the Temperance Union. 
My girls do n’t care much to put themselves for- 
ward. And as to Sunday-school, it opens at half- 
past nine, and we are two and a half miles from 
church. It is hard for farmers to get an early 
start Sunday mornings. And with Sunday- 
school and the Temperance and Missionary 
meetings too, you know how it is, we cannot 
always get a team. In the busy season we can- 
not ask for a honse or a man to harness up.” 


20 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“You are all wrong,” said Aunt Harriet ear- 
nestly. “ The young people ought to take hold 
of church work. If our young folks are not in 
training now for workers, who will do the work 
when those who are now doing it shall have 
passed away? It is the duty and should be a 
chief joy of Christians to do service for their 
Master. If there was a will to the work you 
could find a way. Mostly teams are only busy 
in fine weather ; and in fine weather, when a 
team could not be had, such vigorous girls could 
walk two miles and a half. Our Sabbath-schools 
are suffering for teachers, and classes are often 
put into the hands of frivolous young people 
who make no pretence to piety and are unpre- 
pared to teach. Your girls have been well 
taught in the Scriptures, they all have Teacher’s 
Bibles, and I see in your bookcase Scott’s Com- 
mentaries, a Concordance, Bible Atlas, and Bible 
Dictionary. ‘Here are tools for work. They 
could prepare good lessons. I am sure in the 
Sunday-school they would be blessing and 
blessed. Something in Christian work they 
ought to do. The world is full of need. The 
fields which Christ saw ‘ white to the harvest ’ 
are white still. Where is the Christian common 
sense in praying the ‘ Lord to sent forth laborers 
into his harvest,’ and yet being unwilling to lift 
a hand to the work ? That is too much of the 


BEES AND HONEYSUCKLES. 


21 


Pharisee-fashion for children of God. I tell you, 
niece Milbury, that God is not likely to be fond- 
er of idlers in his family than you are of them 
in yours. Would you like it if your girls refused 
to help you because they did not like to rise 
early, or did not wish to soil their hands, or 
wanted to amuse themselves? In the church 
where I live, all, men and women, old and 
young, are expected to be workers according to 
their ability.” 

“ I should not be surprised if you are right, 
Aunt Harriet,” said Mrs. Milbury. “The fact 
is the girls to me have always seemed little 
girls, and 1 forget that they are women grown. 
If you would talk to them about working in the 
church I feel sure you might do them good. 
I ’d like to see them busy.” 

“ But that matter of church work is only one 
side of the question. What I want to know 
further is, what can your girls do that is practi- 
cal in the way of self-support ? Can one of them 
cut and fit so as to earn a dollar or a dollar and 
a half a day as a dressmaker ? Could they set 
up an establishment for first-class dress and 
cloak making? Could one of them maintain 
herself as a milliner ? There is not one of them 
could teach music or painting, though they have 
had lessons for a smattering of both.” 

“ But, Aunt Harriet, how you do go on !” 


22 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


cried Mrs. Milbury. “ You speak as if the girls 
were likely to be driven to want. Why, this 
place is clear of all incumbrance. Whatever 
happens there will always be the house and the 
farm." 

“ Even houses and farms take wings," said 
Mrs. Proctor; “and if they do not, what can 
girls brought up as yours are do with the farm ? 
What do they know about farming?" 

“Ay, that’s what I ask," said Uncle Aaron, 
coming up from the hayfield and seating him- 
self on the porch step to fan his burning face 
with his big chip hat. “ I tell you, ladies, when 
I consider how those three girls might be thrown 
on the world, and not one of them know how to 
handle herself, I feel dreadful skittish about 
it!" 

The voice of Hannah, the maid-of-all-work, 
was heard calling for Mrs. Milbury. Hannah 
never thought of calling for one of the girls in 
an emergency. Mrs. Milbury left the porch. 

“ What should be done with girls to make 
your mind easy about them ?" asked Uncle Aaron 
of Mrs. Proctor. 

“ Make them capable, in some way, of self- 
support." 

“ But what way ?" demanded the anxious 
farmer. 

“It depends upon the girls, just as the way 


BEES AND HONEYSUCKLES. 23 

the boy shall make his living depends upon the 
boy.” 

“With a boy it’s different,” said farmer 
Aaron. “ I ’d put a boy to work naturally ; but 
with a parcel of pretty girls it do n’t seem natm 
ral,” and he went round the house to wash and 
brush and to change his coat before dinner. 

Of the three girls who were burdening the 
family mind at that moment, Van was, as we 
have said, darning stockings, Myra was in the 
garden picking currants for jelly. Van, from 
her window, could hear her merry song and see 
the bobbing about of her green gingham sun- 
bonnet as she picked. Theodora, familiarly 
Teddie, was lying under a tree in the orchard 
reading. Van tossed her head and in the first 
instance felt greatly exasperated with Aunt 
Proctor. 

Rachel Vandyke Milbury was no beauty, but 
she had a strong, pleasant, healthful face, quick 
wit, and much intelligence ; her brown hair was 
always smooth and shining, and her vigorous 
figure never failed to look well in its neat dress 
set off by linen collar and cuffs. 

“ What does Aunt Harriet mean ?” Van asked 
herself indignantly. Nevertheless her good 
common sense was roused by the frankly put 
question, “ What could you or your sisters do for 
a living if thrown upon your own resources ?” 


24 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


What could they do ? Anything? No. What 
had they ever tried to do besides helping a little 
in the house, where their skilful mother and the 
energetic Hannah made work easy? Under in- 
spiration of remarks made by Uncle Daniel Mil- 
bur y’s enterprising six boys, they had at various 
times tried rearing lambs, colts, and calves, keep- 
ing bees, raising silk-worms, or cultivating small 
fruits. But their efforts had been spasmodic 
and short-lived and had invariably been remit- 
ted in a few weeks. Such affairs had ended in 
a laugh, and Uncle Aaron and the hired man 
had taken the abandoned labors and stock in 
hand. 

“ Aunt Harriet is croaking,” said Van, fold- 
ing up the last pair of stockings ; we shall al- 
ways have the farm, and at the worst there is 
Uncle James.” 

Then Van’s mind reverted to the suggestion 
that they might solve the problem of support by 
marrying. Her native dignity and good sense 
placed her on Aunt Harriet’s side, which was 
really her mother’s also, that need of a home 
was not a proper reason for marriage. It would 
be paying too dear for the home ; one might 
perhaps better go out to service and be free to 
change work and masters. 

“ I wonder if such dire need of a home will 
ever come to us?” said Van, looking out over 


BEES AND HONEYSUCKLES. 


25 


fields of clover, corn, wheat, barley, over fra- 
grant bean-fields and swelling uplands. “Cer- 
tainly not.’’ 

She heard Myra’s song as she picked fruit, 
and noted Teddie’s graceful form lying under 
the apple-tree. Myra was like Van, “ neither 
foul nor fair,” but Teddie was the family beauty. 
She had taken to herself the curls and dimples 
and general prettiness which might have law- 
fully been shared by the plainer Van and Myra. 

“ She at least,” said Van, “ will marry, and for 
love. Any one would be very lucky who would 
get our Teddie.” 

For these three were very affectionate sisters, 
and the elder two cherished and rejoiced in the 
beauty of Teddie as if it were their own. This 
brought back Van’s mind to the thought of mar- 
rying, and she remembered that by some fatal- 
ity there were no unmarried men of suitable age 
in the neighborhood. Besides, how often at 
country gatherings she had heard stout farm 
wives say that “ Adam’s daughters were not cut 
out for farmers’ wives ; always depended on hired 
help ; never sent contributions of bread, jelly, or 
butter to the county fair.” 

“ And yet,” said Van in her musing, “ I know 
we could work just as well as any of them if need 
were and we were put to the test. For my part 
I prefer to stay at home. Mammy and Uncle 


26 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

Aaron are far dearer and nicer than any man 
could be.” 

Now these girls were, Teddie eighteen, Myra 
twenty, and Van twenty-two ; and haunted by the 
conversation she had heard. Van after dinner 
took her sisters up stairs and detailed the case to 
them. Myra spoke out promptly : 

“ She is quite right. There is nothing we 
could do*. I give it up.” 

“ We could sew,” suggested Van. 

“Not well enough to earn fifty cents a day,” 
said Teddie. 

“ We could go to the city and find work,” said 
Van. 

“ I ’ve heard of hot garrets and starvation 
prices there,” sniffed Myra. 

“ The fact is,” said Teddie, “ the whole method 
with us has been wrong. If we had been boys 
we would have been independent and safe ; as 
girls we are helpless and in danger. I ’ve thought 
^ of it like a nightmare sometimes.” 

“ See here,” said Myra, “ let us all think about 
it, and a week from to-day we ’ll have a meeting 
in the garret and talk ourselves well over. I 
think we ought to take ourselves in hand. Some- 
thing must be done about us.” 

“You mean we must do something about our- 
selves,” said Teddie ; “ and that question whether 
we are doing anything that might be called real 


BEES AND HONEYSUCKLES. 


27 


Christian work has come to me sometimes so 
that it has kept me awake nights ! One can’t 
read the Bible without coming upon such texts 
as 'Why stand ye all the day idle?’ ‘What 
owest thou unto thy Lord?’ ‘What doest thou 
here, Elijah ?’ ‘ Work while it is day,’ ‘ Behold 
the fields white to the harvest,’ ‘ Pray ye the 
Lord of the harvest that he will send forth labor- 
ers into his harvest.’ Girls, do we live or act in 
one thing different from what we did before we 
joined the church? Sometimes I think the 
Judge will be able to say to us, ‘ Naked, and ye 
clothed me not ; sick and in prison, and ye vis- 
ited me not ; a stranger, and ye took me not in.’ 
There really must be some work for us if we 
look for it.” 

“ Teddie,” said Van, “ you are a regular little 
concordance. Is all the Bible in your curly head ?” 

“ I wish there was more of it practically in 
my life,” said Teddie, sighing. “The text on 
the wall-roll to-day was, ‘ Let this mind be in 
you which was also in Christ Jesus.’ Did you 
notice it ? I suppose the first thing would be to 
find out what mind was in Christ, and then to 
see if such a mind was in ourselves.” 

“ Teddie, you blessed little soul,” said Myra, 
“ what a pity you were not a boy, so you could 
be a minister ; you ’ll have to help Van and me 
on towards heaven a little.” 


28 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER II. 

*A GARRET CONCLAVE. 

“Weave, brothers ! weave ! Toil is ours ; 

But toil is the lot of man ; 

One gathers the fruit, one gathers the flowers. 

One soweth the seed again ! 

There ’s not a creature, from England’s king 
To the peasant that delves the soil. 

That knows half the pleasure the seasons bring 
If he have not his share of toil.” 

The great garret at Poplar Rise was the 
senate chamber wherein the “ Milbury maids ” 
discussed affairs of State. Extending from one 
side of the house to the other, and lit by great 
semi-circular windows east and west, it was cool 
and well aired in the hottest days. Here Van 
and her sisters planned grand surprises of Christ- 
mas and birthday presents, designed their dress 
for the mild festivals of the neighborhood, ar- 
gued over haps and mishaps, behavior and mis- 
behavior; labored over their compositions and 
considered of their graduating array when they 
had been schoolgirls. Often mamma Milbury 
was invited up to sit as judge in equity and hear 
their various cases. Here were hoarded relics 


A GARRET CONCLAVE. 


29 


and treasures of three generations of Milburys, 
from the flax- wheel and wool-card and loom of 
great-grandmother Milbury to the drab brocade 
gown and scoop bonnet wherein mamma Milbury 
had appeared as Adam’s bride. Here were their 
well-kept childish toys and picture books; but 
the cradle, trundle-bed, and high chairs had 
gone to Uncle Daniel’s to serve his brigade of 
boys. The garret had a spicy smell of cedar- 
wood and camphor-chests and bunches of dried 
herbs. Here the Milbury maids had played day 
after day from early childhood, and here they 
had been wont to flee for refuge from domestic 
ebullitions such as house-cleaning, pig-killing, 
preserve-making, and soap-boiling. Grown older, 
and expected to take active part in the cares of 
household state, they yet resorted to the garret 
to hold a conclave in every crisis of their cheer- 
ful, well protected, and well provided lives. 

Van and Myra were first in the garret at the 
time appointed for discussing “ Ought we to do 
something?” and “ What ought we to do?” 

Presently Teddie was heard in the lower hall 
singing, and so on up both flights of stairs, com- 
ing slowly as if burdened, but singing still of 
one and another person known to fame trying 
in vain to climb the golden stair. Teddie’s voice 
rang out clear and sweet as a nixie’s bell as she 
carolled 


30 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“Don’t you hear dem bells a-ringing?” 
Presently she appeared at the garret door, flushed 
and smiling. 

“ It is well,” cried Myra, “ that we have not 
three pairs of stairs, or you would have had time 
for a litany embracing all the notables of the 
day. It reminds me of the plantation song, 
‘ Where, oh where is good old ’Lijah,’ and so on 
for all the Bible heroes.” 

“ Our subject is a weighty one,” said Teddie, 
“ and I thought we wanted all the light and infor- 
mation we could get, so I looked over our book- 
shelves and borrowed of Miss Prudy Steele and 
Uncle Daniel.” 

Her arms were full of books, and she dropped 
on a worn-out hassock and laid the heap of vol- 
umes between herself and her sisters. Teddie 
was not only the beauty but the book-lover of 
the family. She read more than her sisters. 

“ Let us see,” said Van, picking up a book. 

‘ Woman’s Sphere and Duties,’ by Henry Lins- 
dale, D. D. Pshaw ! why will ministers go on 
preaching special sermons to women and girls, as 
if they knew anything about them ! Now if these 
remarks were by a woman, she might have 
evolved them out of her experiences and her feel- 
ings, and I would have so far taken them for what 
they are worth. But what do these men know 
of women in particular more than may be said 


A GARRET CONCLAVE. 


31 


of humans in general?” and giving the book a 
toss Van flung it far from her. Van was the 
impulsive Milbury. 

“ Luckily it belongs to us,” said Teddie calm- 
ly, “ and if the back comes off we are the only 
losers. Don’t treat this one so. Van, for it be- 
longs to Miss Prudy. This is ‘Woman, Her 
Condition and Prospects,’ also by a Rev. I 
think he tries to be quite fair. I see he has four 
chapters for woman’s suffrage and four against.” 

“Suffrage!” cried Van. “I don’t want to 
discuss suffrage ! That is not what is pressing 
on me. It is woman’s sufferings in not knowing 
what she ought to do, or whether she ought to 
do anything. As for woman’s condition, my 
own is the point of chief interest, and Aunt Har- 
riet thinks I have been brought up a perennial 
infant or idiot, and am also occupying the posi- 
tion of a genteel licensed pauper.” 

Teddie laid her second book down and picked 
up a third. 

“ ‘ To the law and to the testimony.’ 
Here is a Book whose authority we all accept, 
and I have been looking up what it says. Here ’s 
the woman’s chapter, first of all,” and sweetly 
through the garret sounded her clear young 
voice reading the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs. 
Her sisters listened content. 

“ It is beautiful and full of pictures,” said 


32 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


Myra. “ You see her spinning and weaving, as 
our great-grandmother used to do ; you see the 
household clad in purple and scarlet, and the 
busy maidens, and all the abundance and good 
order of the home. But don’t you see, Teddie, 
it is n’t for us ; it does not hit our case. She is 
a married woman, the head of a family ; she not 
only has a husband, but he is an elder, either of 
the church or of the magistrates ; at all events 
he is somebody, and helps her to be somebody. 
What is there for the Milbury maids?” 

There is always something in this Book for 
every one,” said Teddie. “ I ’ve been looking 
our question up. There was Deborah, and I’ve 
come across such funny things about Deborah ! 
You know the Bible, the real Scripture, says, 

‘ Deborah judged Israel ;’ it does n’t in the text 
say one word about Barak helping judge. Well 
the editors long ago, or whoever got up the chap- 
ter headings, were not quite satisfied with the 
inspired statement, so without any authority 
they put in in the contents ‘ Deborah and Barak 
judge Israel.’ Then along comes a man who 
writes our ‘ Bible Atlas and Chronology,’ and he 
thinks the Lord was quite wrong in letting Deb- 
orah be a judge, or at least in letting it be known 
that she judged. And so he puts Barak as judge 
in the list, and leaves out Deborah altogether ! 
And yet no doubt he is one of those who find 


A GARRET CONCLAVE. 


33 


fault with Roman-catholics for altering Scripture 
statement so as to be not what is but what they 
wish.” 

“ Maybe he did that because Deborah is n’t 
mentioned in the faith chapter in Hebrews, 
while Barak is,” said Myra. 

“ That doesn’t seem to me to the point,” said 
Teddie. “ Barak had faith in what Deborah as 
God’s prophetess told him. He believed the 
message that came through the human voice. 
Deborah could not help believing. She had the 
direct word of God. God spoke to her.” 

“No matter what she was. Suppose she was 
a judge, no one will ever elect us, and we should 
not know what to do if they did. And she led 
an army, but there will be no war for us to lead 
in, and if there were I ’d run away !” cried 
Myra. 

“ Here is another place,” said Teddie. “ Ze- 
lophehad, it seems, was like our father, and had 
only daughters and no sons. Five of them there 
were, and they wanted to be treated as sons and 
get land in Canaan, and the Lord said Hhe 
daughters of Zelophehad speak right,’ and they 
had their share of land, were farmers I suppose ; 
that fits us.” 

“ I make sure it states that they all married,” 
cried Myra, “ and had some one to farm for them. 
Every one married in those days.” 

3 


Adam’8 Daughters. 


34 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ Now see here,” cried Teddie triumphantly. 
“ In Nehemiah it says, Shallum, ruler of half of 
Jerusalem, worked on the city wall, ‘ he and his 
daughters.’ And no doubt Shallum ’s daughters 
did good work, or it would not be set down about 
them. So if women could build wall, I think it 
means that they may do whatever they are able 
to do and find a place to do, whether it is wall 
or anything else.” 

“ All right,” said Van, “ we ’ll take that as 
proved. Now the question .is not of our right 
but of our can ; what can we do or ought we to 
do any more than we are doing?” 

“ Here ’s another book,” said Teddie : “ ‘ The 
Employments of Women.’ It is a cyclopaedia of 
women’s work, and it is by a woman.” 

“ Blessed creature !” cried Myra, snatching 
up the book; “if this hasn’t our work in it, I 
give up in despair ! Let us see, ‘ Professional 
Women.’ Can we sing, play, read, write, edit, 
make books, lecture, be doctor, lawyer — ” 

“ Beggar-man, thief ?” chimed Teddie. “ No, 
we can’t ; we have no genius, and a precious slim 
education !” 

“I’m in earnest,” proclaimed Van. “I want 
to find something by which we could arrive at 
self-support. Could we teach ?” 

“We couldn’t get a six months’ certificate,” 
said Myra solemnly. “ Are we strong on the 


A GARRET CONCLAVE. 


35 


multiplication table or compound interest or 
rhetoric ? Do we know all the rivers in Asia or 
all the mountains in Africa? No !” 

“ ‘ Artists,’ ” continued Teddie, reading, 
“ goes with the other professionals. ‘ Mercan- 
tile Pursuits ’ require training, and I ’ve heard 
you get two dollars and a half salary a week, 
pay three dollars for board, and have fifty cents 
less than nothing for clothes and washing! 
‘ Manufacturers.’ Uncle Aaron and mother 
would n’t let us go learn in a factory. All kinds 
of ‘ Seamstresses.’ People round here hire 
very little sewing done, and pay very little for 
what they hire. ' Boarding-house Keepers.’ 
Could we do that?” 

“ Might,” said Myra, “if we had a house and 
something to run it on until boarders came in.” 

“ I move we adjourn until to-morrow !” cried 
Teddie. “ There are the Lacy girls driving up 
to the gate. They ’ve come to spend the after- 
noon. Come on, Myra !” 

Teddie and Myra went dashing down stairs. 
Van picked up the books and laid them in neat 
order on a shelf. She could not endure confu- 
sion, and the Lacy girls were sixteen and seven- 
teen years of age, Teddie ’s especial guests, not 
hers. She folded her arms behind her, and with 
her shoulders well held back and her head up, 
paced the long garret from window to window. 


36 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

Van was honestly seeking a solution of these 
questions which Aunt Harriet had thrust into 
her life. She could not avoid remembering how 
even in her narrow circle of observation many 
women had suddenly been left destitute, and 
worse than that, helpless ! She paused, looking 
out of the westward window, as if the declining 
sun could give her light on her vexed question , 
or as if in the wide horizon she could see new 
and safe paths of life broadening out before her 
and her sisters. Until she heard Aunt Harriet’s 
remarks it had never occurred to her that she 
should be other than she was, a pleasant girl in 
a pleasant home, assuming no responsibilities, 
but just drifting on easily and pleasantly through 
life. These two books which Teddie had been 
examining suggested to Van that there was a 
great army of women daily compelled to answer 
practically this question of self-support. How 
hard some of them found it, how hopeless, how 
much suffering was in it for the unsuccessful. 
A wailing cry from her working sisters, many 
of them young girls like herself, seemed to reach 
her ears. Had she any right to be idle while 
they toiled? And that other book — that Book 
of books — which was so enshrined in little Ted- 
die’s heart — there had fallen into Van’s soul new 
light from that. Merely because she was young 
and fortunate and well protected God had not 


A GARRET CONCLAVE. 37 

meant her to be an idler. Had she not hands 
and feet and tongue, time, health, and had he 
given her no errands to do in this world ? By 
what right was she merely living to please her- 
self? What was the word about seeking not 
our own but another’s good ? Had the church 
to-day no walls on which she might build as 
Shallum’s daughters built the walls of Jerusa- 
lem ? Here were large themes, the religious and 
spiritual work and the daily practical human 
work. Van felt a new burden. She knit her 
brows. Who would help her solve these weighty 
and intricate problems ? She looked from the 
window. 

“ Ah ! there is the man for me !” she cried 
as she saw a wide soft felt hat flapping up the 
road above a bright red flannel shirt. “ I ’ll go 
talk with Uncle Daniel !” 

Down the back stairs, through the garden, 
across the barnyard, where the calves ran after 
her to be petted, and then she lightly swung 
herself upon a gate-post and sat comfortably, 
with her feet resting on the flve-barred gate. 
The tremulous silvery leaves of the poplars cast 
quivering sun-flecked shadows over her as she 
waited. 

Daniel Milbury was the youngest of the 
three Milbury brothers. With him lived Grand- 
ma Milbury. She had lived with her twin sons, 


38 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


and had helped Adam’s wife in her first cares 
for Adam’s three daughters. But when Sara 
Ann, Daniel’s wife, might have said with Leah, 
“A troop cometh,” and when along with the 
army of stout boys misfortunes fell upon Daniel, 
Grandma Milbury went to Daniel’s to live. 
Troubles had pursued Daniel. A tornado over- 
threw a nearly built big barn. Another tornado 
rooted out and entirely destroyed a vast field of 
tobacco just ready for cutting. Daniel invested 
largely in Jersey and Alderney blooded cows, 
and they sickened and died ; he took to raising 
hogs, and cholera broke out among them and 
they had to be ruthlessly killed. So Daniel’s 
wife began to do her work with aid of only one 
young bound girl, and though Grandma Milbury 
could not work much, she knew that she could 
darn stockings and patch small trowsers, and 
wash faces and put on clean blouses and collars, 
and pack little dinner baskets and count up the 
little heads at nightfall, and tell the children 
the stories and the nursery rhymes, and teach 
them the hymns, catechism, and Bible texts for 
which the hard-pressed mother had very little 
time. Therefore Grandma Milbury packed up 
her big work-basket, her “ piece-bag,” her Bible, 
her black frocks, her spectacles, white caps and 
aprons, and her soundless shoes, and moved to 
Daniel’s. 


V 


A GARRET CONCLAVE. 


39 


“ It does n’t make a bit of difference after all, 
you dear old blessing,” said the Milbury maids, 
“ for we shall see you every day all the same.” 
And in truth not a day passed but mamma Mil- 
bury or some of her daughters went to see 
grandma. But it was not to send messages to 
grandma that her namesake Rachel Vandyke 
was waiting on the barnyard gate for Uncle 
Daniel. Uncle Daniel stopped at sight of his 
favorite niece. 

“ Hold up there. Billy-boy !” he shouted to 
the near ox, and the oxen, willing to rest, stopped 
in the shade. Uncle Daniel, his ox-goad in 
hand, his blue overalls thrust in the tops of his 
big boots, seated himself on a piece of timber 
projecting from the great load on the wagon. 
“ Well?” he said. 

“ I heard Aunt Harriet talking about us girls 
the other day,” said Van bluntly ; “she says we 
have been brought up all wrong, and could not 
take care of ourselves if we were left destitute. 
She says there ’s nothing we really know how to 
do ; and she ’s right— there is n’t.” 

“ I ’ve studied over it time and again,” said 
Uncle Daniel. “ If you had been boys, one at 
least would have been made a thorough-going 
farmer. You favor your father. Van, and if you 
had been a boy you ’d have been a farmer after 
the pattern of him and Aaron— lucky farmers. 


40 


ADAM S DAUGHTERS. 


always good crops, selling at the top of the mar- 
ket, and making safe investments. One of you 
would have had a good trade, as building or 
milling; and the other one would have had a 
profession, and the world would have been the 
better of you. I Ve often thought of it.” 

“ What ’s the use of thinking that way ? We 
must be thought of as we are. We are girls, and 
we want the world to be the better of us as girls. 
We’ve talked of it lately. We don’t want to 
go to the city in an emergency, and make under- 
waists for ten cents, and drilling drawers for five 
or six cents. We are hearty eaters, and we ’d 
starve at that rate,” cried Van. 

“ I should say so, indeed,” said Uncle Daniel 
in dismay. 

“And,” continued his niece, “in case of trou- 
ble here, we do n’t want to be a burden on you, 
nor to go to the poorhouse, so what could we 
do? You know none of us will ever marry.” 

Here Uncle Daniel leaned back more heavily 
on the load of timber and burst into Homeric 
laughter. 

“ What are you laughing at ?” cried Van tes- 
tily. “ You know we would n’t if we could ; and 
if we would, who is there for us to marry ?” 

“You are not more helpless than most other 
girls,” said Uncle Daniel, “but mighty few girls 
have learning that is marketable. They never 


V 


A GARRET CONCLAVE. 


41 


earn a dollar, and the consequence is they do n’t 
know practically how much a dollar is worth 
nor what it ought to fetch. Sixty or eighty 
cents — that ’s all the worth of girls’ dollars.” 

“ What would you have taught us if we had 
been your girls, Uncle Daniel ?” asked Van coax- 
ingly. 

“ If you ’d been my girls no doubt I ’d have 
been as big a fool as other people and spent my 
time spoiling you,” said her uncle grimly. 

“ Uncle, why can’t you talk to me reasona- 
bly, as if I were one of your boys?” demanded 
Van. “ My father and Uncle Aaron were twins, 
and I think I made a narrow escape from being 
twins too. I always feel as if I were myself and 
my twin brother. I have what folks call a girl’s 
virtues, and I have some of the manly virtues 
that belong by nature to my missing twin bro- 
ther. 1 strictly mind my own business, when I 
have any. I never meddle with other people’s 
business. I am not afraid of things and I de- 
spise debt. Speak to me as if I were a reason- 
able and useful person. What can I do ?” 

Uncle Daniel looked at her meditatively. 

“You are the moral image of your father,” 
he cried. “ I say. Van, why don’t you turn for 
work where he turned for it — where Adam and 
Eve turned for it — to the ground? The Lord 
has cast your lot here in the country and with 


42 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


farming people. You are not called to run away 
for work. Learn what you can, all you can, from 
what is around you. Learn farming. Could you 
run this farm if Aaron died?” 

“No, of course not,” said Van with energy. 

“Then learn to do it,” said Uncle Daniel. 
“Go on. Boy Blue!” this last exhortation being 
to the off ox, and the team and Uncle Daniel 
moved leisurely down the road. 

That night, when the sisters had gone to 
bed, their two rooms having an archway be- 
tween, Van called out from her room, “ Girls, 
we ’ll have that matter all to talk over again ; we 
are as far off as ever from any sensible ideas 
about it.” 

Presently she rose, and tall and white in her 
nightdress, went into her sisters’ room and sat 
on the side of their bed and told them what she 
and Uncle Daniel had said by the barnyard 
gate. 

“ But after all nothing will happen, and we ’ll 
live here in comfort all our days, as Miss Prudy 
Steele has done,” said Myra. 

“ And at the worst we could move to the 
city, and keep boarders, or clerk, or sew,” said 
Van hesitatingly. 

“And break our hearts and starve,” cried 
Teddie. “ My mind is made up : I shall study 
two hours every day hard, reviewing all my 


A GARRET CONCLAVE. 


43 


studies, until I know enough to get a certificate. 
Then I shall get a school and try my hand at 
teaching.” 

Great admiration of Teddie from Van and 
Myra. 

‘‘And after all,” said Myra, “we have forgot- 
ten Uncle James ! He writes to us and says 
such nice things about us — that is when he 
writes at all — about twice a year. He would 
help us out.” 

“Uncle Daniel says he wouldn’t give a*row 
of pins for Uncle James,” said Van suddenly. 

“ All this is daily bread work,” said Teddie, 
“and I don’t think God means us to do our 
thinking all about that and none about work for 
him. In one of those books I took to the gar- 
ret it said, ‘ Just as parts of our bodies might 
atrophy for want of use, so the powers of the 
soul dwindle when not called into honest action 
for God and for humanity.’ ” 


44 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER III. 

LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY. 

“ Gloom is upon thy silent hearth, 

O silent house ! once filled with mirth ; 

Sorrow is in the breezy sound 

or thy tall poplars whispering round.” 

The second garret conclave was adjourned 
sine die. The Milbury maids suddenly became 
very busy ; there was first a picnic and then a 
trip to Westchester. After that it was decided 
to enlarge and improve the church, and the 
Milbury girls were diligent among the collect- 
ors for that end. Then the Bible Society had 
its anniversary with a great meeting in a wood- 
land on Uncle Daniel’s farm, and the girls were 
busy and liberal in preparing the dinner for 
that. Next came a Fourth of July celebration 
on a large scale, and the garret was full of 
merry young people arranging decorations. 

The little excitement about being able to do 
something practical seemed to have passed out 
of the thoughts of all but Teddie. Teddie said 
nothing, but she thought the more. She searched 
out all the long-unused grammars, arithmetics, 
histories, and geographies, and made herself a 
den in one corner of the garret and there daily 


LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY. 4$ 

she gave two hours to hard work. If anything 
was going on for the day, Teddie only went to 
her studies somewhat earlier. She began on 
the easy primary books to refresh her mind 
with simple formulas and first principles, and 
then took the more advanced work. 

“ Whatever are you about, Teddie ?” demand- 
ed Myra, following her to the garret one day. 
“ I observe that on very busy days you sneak 
off and leave me to do all the work in our room ! 
What is going on? Are you turning author 
secretly ?” 

“ Never so bad as that, Myra, and I know 
you wont mind about the room days when we 
have to start off somewhere early. I am deter- 
mined that at least one of us girls shall know 
enough to teach a district school.” 

“ Dear me ! I’d forgotten all about that ne- 
cessity for knowing something !” exclaimed 
Myra ; “ I must think of it again.” 

That evening when they were all sitting on 
the porch Myra said, “ Mother and Uncle Aaron, 
don’t you want to let me go to Westchester for 
six months and take a course in bookkeeping ? 
Suppose I should be left destitute some day, 
what would I do for a living? Uncle Daniel 
says we girls ought to know some business.” 

“Daniel’s mostly about right,” said Uncle 
Aaron ; “ but you girls are safe with the farm ; 


46 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


the rent, and the interest of three or four thou- 
sand I have in bank, would always keep you.” 

“ There does not seem to be any need for 
your doing other than you are doing,” said 
mamma Milbury ; “I do n’t want you off in 
Westchester by yourself, young as you are.” 

“You were off here married at my age,” said 
Myra. 

“ Listen to this,” said Van, who was reading 
a magazine. “ Here is an article about ‘ pov- 
erty,’ and here are some bits from it: ‘The 
qualities which we often dislike and fear in a 
man — namely, shrewdness, hardness, adroitness, 
selfishness — are those which often insure suc- 
cess. The qualities which we love in a man — 
truth, generosity, trustfulness, the desire to 
help — often send him to the poorhouse.” 

“There’s a bad lookout for you. Uncle 
Aaron ; all your money will be gone in a jiffy !” 
cried Myra. 

Van continued reading, “ ‘ Lack of self-confi- 
dence is often the cause of failure and poverty.’ 
We don’t lack self-confidence, girls ; we wont be 
poor from that cause. What next ? ‘ Rum is 
the greatest cause of poverty ; it is the cause of 
more poverty than all the other causes put to- 
gether.’ There now, that looks better for us; 
we none of us are intemperate ; we may not be 
paupers after all. ‘ Poverty often results from 


LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY. 47 

aimlessness.’ Ah now we are hit, sure enough ! 
Myra, you and I will be beggars certain; we 
have no aims ; but Teddie has. What further ? 
‘ Laziness is a grand cause of poverty ; the lazy 
man is often, and ought to be always, the poor 
man.’ Hope for us once more ; we are not lazy, 
are we, mammy ? But now listen, all of you ; 
here is some hard common sense that comes 
home to us all : ‘I believe that much poverty 
and suffering and distress would be prevented 
if parents would insist that their children, boys 
and girls alike, should be taught some useful, 
honorable means of earning a living, either by 
a trade or other occupation. The crying need 
of to-day is healthy, vigorous, strong, active, 
clear-minded men and women, who are capable 
of doing something; who can, in other words, 
exercise alike their brain and muscle and skill 
in doing some one thing well.’ That cuts you 
and Uncle Aaron, mammy, for you have 
never had us taught to do any one thing 
well that would be a means of earning a living 
I think you’d better let Myra learn book- 
keeping.” 

“ Of course she can go if she really wants to,” 
said Mrs. Milbury. 

“ I would really like to try it in September,” 
said Myra. 

“And what shall I do?” demanded Van; 


48 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“I’m the eldest, and ought to lead the way in 
the defensive war against poverty.” 

“ There ’s no need of crying poverty,” said 
Uncle Aaron; “there is not a dollar of mort- 
gage on the farm, and farms cannot burn up nor 
be lost in financial panics.” 

“ But there is the right and wrong in it,” said 
Van. “ I surely think that ‘ Why stand ye here 
all the day idle ?’ was spoken to both men and 
women, and that it does not mean religious 
work only, but the Lord dislikes idleness of any 
kind. And when I look at myself I cannot see 
that I am much better than an idler and a cum- 
berer of the ground.” 

“ I wish you were a boy and I ’d teach you to 
farm,” said Uncle Aaron. 

“ Uncle Daniel says I can learn to farm as I 
am ; women have been good farmers. And he 
says rented farms run down.” 

“ La ! who ever heard of a woman farming a 
place like this?” said Mrs. Milbury ; and once 
more the subject was dropped. 

“ I have calculated,’' said Myra to her sisters, 
“ that it will cost about two hundred and fifty 
dollars for me to go to Westchester and stay 
six months, and take a thorough bookkeeping 
course. I ’ll teach you enough. Van, so you can 
keep the farm books for Uncle Aaron and Un- 
cle Daniel. And in the spring I mean to get a 


LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY. 


49 


place as bookkeeper in the village at John 
Steele’s store. He only pays two hundred a 
year, but it will keep me in practice and be 
something to do.” 

“Well, next spring I mean to go to the 
teachers’ examination and get a certificate and 
try for a school somewhere in the country and 
see if I can make it go,” said Teddie. 

“ I feel as if we were getting to be very use- 
ful and business-like,” said Van, “but if you both 
mean to be away from home all day or all the 
week, I shall have to stay here and keep the 
dear mammy’s heart up ; she would be too lone- 
some if we all went. I believe after all I ’ll 
take Uncle Daniel’s counsel and learn farming.” 

“ But, mousie, thou art not alane 
In proving foresight may be vain ; 

The best laid plans of mice and men 
Gang aft agley 1” 

sang Teddie. 

“Your voice is too musical to be a crow and 
croak,” said Van. 

But musical as Miss Teddie’s voice was, it 
was Teddie who brought to Poplar Rise the 
notes of doom, and shed desolation abroad under 
the honeysuckles and roses and through the 
peaceful home of three generations. Poor 
Teddie! She had been to the village post- 
office. The Milburys contented themselves 
4 


Adam’s Daughters. 


50 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


with going for their mail twice a week. They 
had few correspondents, and their world was 
Poplar Rise and the adjacent farm-lands. The 
news of the outer world, its troubles, crimes, 
disasters, came often enough in semi- weekly 
papers. Teddie was usually mail-carrier, and 
being fond of reading, was wont to indulge in 
reading the paper on the road home. She 
leaned comfortably back in the buggy, let the 
gray mare take her own way with the road and 
the reins, and was apt to get home late to sup- 
per. But that was no matter; the family lin- 
gered round the tea-table while Teddie ate her 
meal and kindly informed them what news was 
to be found in the two or three periodicals lying 
on the table, and which any of them might read 
for themselves. But they liked to hear the 
news from Teddie first and discuss it a little, 
before some one discoursed it aloud from the 
printed columns. 

It was a brilliant late August evening that 
Teddie came back from the postoffice, and could 
scarcely wait for the farm-boy to take the gray 
mare, so eager the girl was to run in and detail 
the news. The day was one of those still warm 
August days, when a hazy hint of coming au- 
tumn hangs dreamily over the landscape, and 
the breezes are heavy and sweet with the per- 
fume of ripening fruits. After that such days 


LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY. 5 1 

always filled the Milbury girls with sadness 
and a pained memory. 

“ Uncle Aaron !” said Teddy, running into 
the cool dining-room and tossing her hat and 
gloves upon the broad old-fashioned lounge, 
“didn’t you know treasurer Jonas Meyrick very 
well ?” 

“Oh yes,” said Uncle Aaron, carving cold 
corned-beef for Teddie’s plate. “ Mr. Meyrick 
has always thought a great deal of me.” 

“ Horrible man ! Poor wretched, unfortu- 
nate man, too,” said Teddie, taking her seat and 
passing her glass to Myra for milk. “Just 
think! he has been stealing right and left for 
three years, and he is over three hundred thou- 
sand short in his accounts ; and when he found 
that he was to be arrested he stepped into the 
next room and shot himself. And he is bank- 
rupt and no one knows what he has done with 
the money.” Teddie rattled off this informa- 
tion in great haste. Such sensations were not 
common in that God-fearing, well-to-do, quiet 
community. 

They all looked at Teddie. None of them 
looked at Uncle Aaron until Teddie turned to- 
wards him and screamed. 

Uncle Aaron’s face was livid, great beads of 
cold sweat rolled over his brow, his eyes were 
fixed and starting, his extended arms clutched 


52 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


vainly at the air. The family sprang to their 
feet: mamma Milbury quickly unfastened her 
brother’s collar and the neck of his shirt, Van 
sprinkled him with ice-water, Myra ran for the 
ammonia, Teddie dashed to the porch and called 
to the farm-boy to turn the gray mare about and 
drive for the doctor with all speed ; then, swift 
as a hound, she ran down the road to call Uncle 
Daniel. 

Uncle Aaron caught his breath and struggled 
to his feet, still gasping and clutching at empty 
air. “Adam ! Adam !” he screamed in a hoarse 
voice of agony, “Adam, my brother! I have 
ruined your girls ! Adam, I have robbed your 
daughters !” And then he swayed heavily back- 
wards, but Van and Myra caught him in their 
strong young arms. 

They looked at each other over his uncon- 
scious form as he lay on the lounge. Dimly 
looming before them they saw some great ruin 
and trouble, something that was to change all 
their future. But the worst trouble was to see 
that fatal purple growing over Uncle Aaron’s 
face, his stalwart figure becoming rigid, to hear 
that stertorous breathing sounding through all 
the house like a bell of death. They loved this 
man. They had been his darlings, and he had 
been to them for fifteen years a second father. 
What was this half-divined other trouble, what- 


LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY. 


53 

ever it might be, compared to the loss of Uncle 
Aaron ? 

Hannah, the experienced servant, and Mrs. 
Milbury, to whom all the neighborhood sent in 
cases of sickness, busied themselves doing what 
little they could for Uncle Aaron, who fast 
passed into insensibility. The doctor and Uncle 
Daniel and Uncle Daniel’s wife Sara Ann came, 
and Uncle Aaron was laid on his own bed. 
They all looked dolefully at each other, shaking 
their heads. Little hope for Uncle Aaron. 

“ What brought it on ?” asked Uncle Daniel, 
taking Van aside. Van told him what little she 
knew — Teddie’s hastily told news — Uncle Aa- 
ron’s remorseful cry. 

The fatal paper, the city issue of the previous 
day, lay neglected under the dining-table. Un- 
cle Daniel, full of fears, took it to the window. 
The light of the August day was not fading 
faster than his hopes as he read the news which 
had destroyed his brother. There it stood : 
Uncle Aaron was one of Jonas Mey rick’s securi- 
ties, and it was announced that the “ four gentle- 
men, two of them substantial farmers, who had 
signed Jonas Meyrick’s bonds, were able to make 
good all the deficit.” Yes : no doubt they were. 
It would sweep away all that Aaron Milbury 
had to pay his share, and the Milbury twins’ 
property had always been undivided, vested 


54 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


since Adam’s death entirely in Aaron, to whom 
he had left it, believing that in that way he best 
secured the future of his helpless family. 

Adam’s daughters had lost their inheritance ! 

Poor generous, hopeful, trustful, usually most 
fortunate and successful Uncle Aaron ! The 
flattery and the glib tongue of Jonas Meyrick 
had succeeded in securing his name on his 
bonds, and Aaron Milbury was holden for every 
dollar that he was worth. 

Before midnight all the neighborhood had 
the news, for nearly all the farmers took the 
semi-weekly paper. Many were the comments. 
Most wondered that such a level-headed man as 
Aaron Milbury had been persuaded to an act so 
rash ; but then not a man in the county had ex- 
pected a gentleman who stood so well as Treas- 
urer Meyrick to default ! Everybody now found 
out that the “ carelessness with which the Milbury 
property had been left all in Aaron’s hands was 
shameful. Why had not Adam’s daughters, 
poor helpless things, been secured from loss ?” 
‘‘ It is n’t well to trust anybody, not even your 
twin brother ; for in this age of the world, if a 
man isn’t a knave he is no doubt left to be a 
fool. No one is safe, nothing is safe.” “ Could 
not the widow Milbury and the daughters claim 
their part out of the estate?” 

The wise ones shook their heads and con- 


LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY. 55 

eluded that “ Adam’s family would have no 
showing. A long lawsuit lost in the end — that 
would be the amount of it.” 

It was two days after, and life was ebbing 
fast from the lately hale farmer, before he recov- 
ered sufficiently to speak. He looked about and 
muttered, “ Adam’s daughters.” 

“ Here we are, dear Uncle Aaron !” cried the 
girls, bending their loving faces above him, faces 
whose joy and health were now shaded by watch- 
ing and by sorrow. “ Dear uncle, do n’t worry 
about us.” 

He turned his heavy eyes towards his bro- 
ther. “ Daniel, you know what I ’ve done ? I Ve 
robbed Adam’s daughters.” 

“ No, no, uncle,” said the girls, “ you have 
never robbed us. No !” 

What shall I say to Adam ?” he moaned. 

“ Tell him,” sobbed Van, “ that you ’ve been 
the very best man to us that ever was. Tell him 
we never felt that we had lost our father, our 
uncle was so kind and good.” 

“ Adam’s daughters will be left beggars,” he 
said huskily. 

“No, uncle, never that,” said Myra, laying 
her hand on his brow. “We wont beg, uncle. 
We shall take care of ourselves easily. You 
know what is in the Bible, uncle, ‘ I have never 
seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


56 

bread.’ Tell father and our grandfather that 
we are safe in God’s care.” 

“ Daniel, Daniel,” said Uncle Aaron, rousing 
up, “ here ’s where I missed it. I forgot that the 
Bible is a good book to do your business by. 
Do n’t it say, ‘ He that hateth suretyship is sure 
‘ He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for 
it ’ ? Daniel, I missed it when I did n’t run my 
daily work, as well as my soul, on Bible rules.” 

‘‘ Uncle, never mind the business now ; all 
will come right ; try and sleep a little, while we 
all sit by you,” said Myra. 

Uncle Aaron closed his eyes, but his hands 
worked restlessly. Presently he looked up again 
and exclaimed, “ Daniel ! stand by the girls. 
Do n’t let ’em want. Take care of Adam’s wife. 
Adam, Adam, you trusted to me, and — I ’ve 
robbed your daughters !” 

He is gone,” said Mr. Lowell, the minister, 
bending over him. “ His last hours have been 
made wretched by one mistake, but now he is 
where he can see the good end of the Lord, and 
know that light shall be brought out of darkness. 
Now he can understand that God turns even the 
wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder 
he will restrain.” 

That night Uncle Daniel and Sara Ann, his 
wife, sat by the dead body of Aaron their bro- 
ther. 

\ 


LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY. 57 

“ Only for that mistake in being over-per- 
suaded, Aaron might have lived twenty years 
longer,” said Daniel Milbury. “That word he 
said about taking counsel from the Bible for our 
daily affairs struck me, Sara Ann. What a power 
of good business rules are laid down in the 
Bible ! Now Aaron would n’t have gone against 
Scripture in any of the laws laid down for his 
behavior ; and yet he went dead against what it 
says, ‘ If thou be surety for a friend thou art 
snared with the words of thy mouth.’ ” 

“ Do you suppose that Margaret and her 
daughters could lay a claim to their share out of 
the property ?” asked Sara Ann. 

“ I talked with Squire Deems yesterday, while 
I was waiting for medicine to be put up over at 
the village, and he knows all how the property 
stood, and was left by father and by Aaron. He 
says Margaret and the girls have a clear moral 
right to half there is, but that he don’t think 
they could establish a legal right. Things were 
left very queerly ; I do n’t know the rights of it 
myself. Adam was terribly afraid of Margaret 
and the girls falling into the hands of sharpers, 
but he thought if Aaron had everything they ’d 
be perfectly safe. Just shows, Sara Ann, that no 
matter how much pains we take, things may all 
go wrong. I was reading a Psalm just now, 
‘ Except the Lord build the house they labor in 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


58 

vain that build it : except the Lord keep the city 
the watchman waketh but in vain.’ ” 

“ Well, Daniel, Adam’s daughters have been 
confided to the Lord’s keeping from their grand- 
father down.” 

“ And he ’ll keep ’em, Sara Ann, mark my 
words, he ’ll keep ’em. Just how, we can’t tell. . 
He may think they lack schooling, and he may 
send them to school a bit, we can’t tell.” 

Sara Ann leaned back in her chair, covered 
her face, and took another cry over the kind, 
cheery brother gone, over sister Margaret whose 
widowed desolation seemed to be renewed in this 
loss, over Grandma Milbury bereft of her eldest 
son, over the three girls who had lost a second 
father. And what could these girls do? Daniel 
would help them his best, but Daniel was heav- 
ily weighted in the race for life ; his farm was 
under mortgage, his six boys ranged from three 
to eighteen years old, he had his aged mother to 
make comfortable, and within a month had re- 
ceived into his home his wife’s invalid sister. 

The neighbors were as much troubled about 
the case of Adam’s daughters as was their aunt 
Sara Ann. Were there four more helpless wo- 
men than Adam Milbury ’s amiable widow and 
three neat-handed daughters ? 

Well, if these four women were deplorably 
ignorant of business, if they^id not one of them 


LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY. 59 

know how to draw a check or cut a coupon or 
earn a dollar bill or sign a conveyance, unless 
they were told exactly where and exactly how to 
put their names, they were just and they were 
generous. Not one word of condemnation of the 
unhappy Aaron escaped their lips ; no repining 
over his weakness or his recklessness or his 
folly was ever uttered, possibly such a thought 
scarcely rose in their heads. Their home, their 
all, must go to pay for the mad schemes, the 
vices, the extravagance, the stock-gambling of a 
defaulter who had traded on the genial nature 
and ready truthfulness of Aaron Milbury. They 
accepted their lot in perfect silence ; whatever 
they may have felt, they did not utter a word of 
anger or repining. 


6o 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE. 

“ E’en such is time, who takes on trust 
Our youth, our joys, and all we have, 

And pays us but with earth and dust.” 

Uncle Aaron was buried on the last day of 
August. The next morning Uncle Daniel and 
lawyer Deems came to Poplar Rise and ex- 
plained to Mrs. Milbury and her daughters the 
misstep which had cost them their home and all 
that they had hoped to have. The following 
day the appraisers and an agent came to inspect 
the property. ^ The agent told Mrs. Milbury that 
the crops could be sold as they stood, and the 
stock, farm-implements, carriages, and part of 
the household goods at public auction within 
three weeks. The new owner of the farm when 
it was sold would not take possession until late 
November, and until that date the widow and 
her daughters could remain at the farm. Mrs. 
Milbury bore up wonderfully at first ; she went 
through the house with the appraisers, pointing 
ing out the articles which belonged to Grandma 
Milbury, and must be sent to her at Daniel’s; 
she also indicated the various pieces of furniture 


THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE. 6l 

brought to the farm by herself when she mar- 
ried ; and whatever, as the piano and Van’s bed- 
room furniture, had been personal gifts to the 
girls from their uncle. 

To these the agent added many necessary 
housekeeping articles, which he said would be of 
much use to the family, but bring practically 
nothing at a sale. All the little ornaments made 
by themselves he also indicated as private pos- 
sessions of the girls. 

“We shall have enough to furnish a little 
home decently,” said Van, striving to imitate 
her mother’s calm, “ and we will sell the piano 
to help pay the rent.” 

But after this business was finished, and the 
simple mourning had been prepared, Mrs. Mil- 
bury gave way under the strain of grief and loss, 
and was ill for several weeks. When her hus- 
band had died nothing in her home surround- 
ings had been changed ; she had had the strong 
aid and comfort and sympathy of Uncle Aaron, 
whose sorrow had seemed almost equal to her 
own ; and then cares for her little children had 
diverted her mind. Now, prostrated, she fell 
helplessly back for the time on the care of 
these same girls, children no longer, but young 
women, though in a business point of view as 
helpless as children. 

“ There ’s one thing, girls,” said Van to her 


62 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


sisters one night, after their mother had been 
seen comfortably in bed, “ we must look out for 
our affairs ourselves now, and not bother the 
mammy. We must see to hiring a house, and 
arrange for the moving, and decide on some way 
of making a living.” 

They were sitting in the dining-room in the 
dark, and Ben, the eldest of Uncle Daniel’s boys, 
was with them. Ben stayed at the farm at night 
now, for the farm-hands were gone, and Hannah 
had been sent to Uncle Daniel’s to live when 
grandma’s goods had been removed from Poplar 
Rise. The Milbury maids could not afford 
longer to keep a servant, so Hannah, having 
helped dismantle the old home, had taken her 
leave with grandma’s Penates. 

“ We must live near the village,” said Myra, 
“ for whatever work we can find to do must be 
found there.” 

“ I wonder we have not heard from Uncle 
James,” said Van. “ He just sent a single line 
saying he ‘ was very sorry,’ when he was written 
to about Uncle Aaron’s death and that we were 
left destitute.” 

“ Father says he is not the right kind of a 
man,” said Ben stoutly. “ I remember him 
when he was here five years ago ; he looked like 
a mongrel made up of cur and fox.” 

“I do n’t know how iU is,” said Myra in a 


THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE. 63 

vexed tone ; “ country men and boys always seem 
to hate people from the city.” 

“ At all events we must look to ourselves, and 
not to Uncle James,” said Teddie, “ and I ’ll tell 
you how far I ’ve gone in the work. I went and 
asked Mrs. Lowell if she knew of any teaching I 
could get for the present — just of little children, 
you know. I could teach English, and begin 
them in music, I suppose. She spoke to Mrs. 
Steele, and she said I could be daily governess 
for her children, three of them you remember. 
She will want me from nine until two, and I will 
get dinner there, and not be needed on Satur- 
days. Mrs. Steele proposed that we should rent 
their little brown house of Mr. Steele, at the 
edge of the village. We could have it for three 
dollars a month if we would mend the chimney 
and the roof.” 

“ That house !” cried Myra. “ Why, that isn’t 
fit to live in, child.” 

“ Oh yes, it could be made to do,” said Ted- 
die. “ I took the key and went through it, and 
brought the key here so you can go see it to- 
morrow. There are two rooms below and two 
above, small of course, and a kitchen in the L. 
There is a little garden that has not been culti- 
vated for years, and three or four panes of glass 
are out. But the house is whole, only one place 
that needs shingling on the roof, and the chim- 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


64 

ney should be built up a few courses of brick 
that blew off.” 

“ If that is all that is needed,” said Ben, “ we 
boys can do it for you ; and we have bricks and 
a bundle or two of shingles ; that will be enough. 
You know father makes us learn everything, 
and we shingled the gable of our barn this 
spring and laid up the chimney of the new 
smoke-house.” 

“ The rent is cheap, and it will be near the 
village and near my work,” urged Teddie, “ and 
near church.” 

Yes, that was a great consideration. Hith- 
erto the Milbury girls had felt the satisfaction of 
having done their whole duty if they appeared 
in church every Sunday morning and now and 
then in the evening. But since this trouble 
had come upon them they longed more for the 
Lord’s house ; they wanted to be at the Sabbath- 
school, and felt as if the weekly prayer-meeting 
would be a comfort to them. Mr. Lowell, their 
pastor, seemed much nearer to them. Van even 
forgave him for having the temerity to preach a 
sermon to young women. It would be a pleas- 
ure to be nearer the church, truly. 

“And how much does Mrs. Steele mean to 
pay you, Teddie ?” asked Van. 

“ Two dollars a week and my dinners,” said 
Teddie hesitatingly. 


THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE. 65 

“ Well, that is munificent !” cried Van an- 
grily ; but the Steeles are all noted for their 
greed. She rates her old house high and the 
teaching of her children low, seems to me. Two 
dollars for five days’ work ! Less than her kitch- 
en-girl gets.” 

“ But we are not where we can choose. Van,” 
said Teddie, “ and I only engage by the week, 
and when something better offers I can take it. 
Half a loaf is better than no bread, and two dol- 
lars a week will be a help. I shall study hard 
evenings, so that in the spring or next fall I can 
get a good school at forty dollars a month. And 
I can do most of the housework afternoons.” 

“ What a pity that I had not tried the book- 
keeping course a year ago, when there was 
plenty of money for it !” said Myra. Now I 
cannot afford it at all. If I had gone last year I 
could be getting two hundred a year now. Oh 
dear!” 

“ Never mind, we will think of something 
else,” said Van. “ I am going to try for places 
to go out sewing. I can get sixty cents a day 
for plain sewing and seventy-five cents if I ven- 
ture on children’s gowns. I think I can find 
work three or four days in the week at least.” 

“You have always hated sewing, and it tires 
vou so,” sisfhed Myra. “ You need a more active 
Ufe, Van.” 


Adara’8 Daughters. 


5 


66 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ I need just now what I can get,” said Van. 

“ Well, I shall take in sewing at home,” said 
Myra. am first rate at making quilts and 
comfortables, and I can do pretty well on little 
boys’ clothes ; I have helped Aunt Sara Ann so 
much on them. I ’ve spoken to Miss Prudy 
Steele and to Mrs. Deems to try and help me 
find work. I suppose I shall get precious little 
for it.” 

“ It wont cost us much to live,” said Van. 
“ I think we have on hand clothes enough for 
two years all but the shoes. We can be very 
economical and work our things over.” 

“And your living will not cost much,” said 
Ben. “ Father says he will send you all your 
wood and apples and potatoes and corn-meal 
and whatever else you need from the farm. We 
boys will always see to wood and kindlings and 
make the garden for you, and if you take the 
little brown house Ned can bring you milk each 
day as he goes in to the High School. We 
mean now to try and pay you back for some of 
the things you have done for us: you have 
helped mother with nearly all her sewing, and 
have had some of us fellows here for weeks at a 
time; and you have always had us here for 
Christmas and New Year’s and Thanksgiving. 
Now we ’ll stand by you, see if we don’t.” 

Myra refreshed her spul by a cry at these 


THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE. 67 

reminiscences. Van looked severely out into 
the moonlight. 

The next day Van, Ben, and Myra went to 
visit the little brown house, and at evening its 
merits were again discussed. 

“ I ’ll tell you one thing, you girls can’t be 
going out for wood and coal in all kinds of 
weather,” said Ben. “ You ’ll have to take that 
L room for a fuel-room, and we ’ll build you a 
coal-bin in it with a slide-door at the bottom, so 
you can get coal out easy; and we’ll build a 
wood-pile up along one side, and store your kind- 
lings in there too ; and the pump is there already. 
You girls have not been used to roughing it. 
You ’ll get sick if you do n’t look out.” 

“ We can’t afford to be sick,” said Van ; “ but 
can we ever make that place look decent? I 
shiver at the idea of putting poor little mammy 
in there. Such worn-out paint, such rough, ugly 
walls ! And her home has always been so nice.” 

I ’ll tell you,” cried Teddie, clapping her 
hands. We can* any of us put on paint, and 
out in the barn there are three or four paint- 
brushes and two or three little pails of good 
paint, slate color, white, and brown. You know 
Uncle Aaron was always painting things up, 
pumps, farm tools — ” 

“ And I used to help him ; I know how,” in- 
terrupted Van. “That is it! We girls will go 


68 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


paint that house inside ; it ’s not big enough to 
take much time. That will be a help.” 

“And we ’ll paper it,” cried Myra, “at least 
some of the rooms ; there is such a lot of wall- 
paper up in the garret. Don’t you know. Van, 
mother bid it off at an auction at the store once ? 
There are two kinds, and a good many rolls of 
each.” 

“ Van and I can hang paper,” said Ben, “ with 
one of you to help. We papered grandma’s 
room for her last spring for a surprise.” 

“ Well, with new paper and clean paint and 
our furniture it may be made to look tolerably 
decent at the brown house,” said Van. 

“ And I ’ll mend up the front step and paint 
the front door and the window-frames, if you 
have enough brown paint,” said Ben. 

All this planning the girls kept to them- 
selves, to give their mother a surprise when she 
became better. But she also was planning as 
she lay in her room. The first evening that she 
was able to sit up she said, “ I shall soon be able 
to do something, girls, and I have concluded 
what to do. I have talked with the doctor about 
it, and he thinks the idea a good one. I am a 
splendid nurse, you know, and I shall go out 
nursing. A nurse among the sick is greatly 
needed about here, and I should be sure of being 
well treated among my neighbors.” 


THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE. 69 

“Oh, mammy,” cried Myra, “we don’t want 
you to do anything. We will take care of you ; 
we are young.” 

“ And I am not old,” said Mrs. Milbury, “ and 
I am yet able to work. If we all do all we can, 
and thereby manage a living, we shall do well, 
my poor dears. I can keep house well, and I 
can take care of the sick ; that ends my accom- 
plishments. I cannot leave you and take a place 
as housekeeper. If I go out to nurse I can be 
at home with you often.” 

The Milbury maids looked down blankly. 
They had contemplated wage-earning for them- 
selves without bitterness, but that at fifty years 
of age their widowed mother should go out to 
earn her bread among strangers seemed cruel 
enough. Van did a little sum in mental arith- 
metic, and found that if she and her sisters 
worked every day in the year at the best pay 
they were likely to get, eight dollars a week 
would be the sum total of their earnings, and 
this could not provide for the necessities of four 
people. Nurses were paid four, five, or six dol- 
lars a week in that neighborhood, and Mrs. Mil- 
bury might be able to make a living if her health 
proved equal to the undertaking. 

When Mrs. Milbury was able to go out the 
girls took her to the little brown house, all 
freshly papered and painted, the kitchen L pro- 


70 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


vided with fuel, the front door, roof, and chim- 
ney mended. “Could she feel any way com- 
fortable living there ?” they demanded anx- 
iously. 

“ I ought to feel happy anywhere,” she an- 
swered, “since God has given me three such 
dear, good daughters.” 

Winter came early that year. The moving 
from Poplar Rise was to take place on the eigh- 
teenth of November. Uncle Daniel’s boys and 
their big wagon were to transfer the remnants 
of the Milbury household goods from the Pop- 
lars to the little brown house. On the evening 
of the seventeenth Mrs. Milbury was called away 
to nurse a neighbor who had broken her leg by 
a fall. The girls were left to do the moving 
alone. 

“ All right, mammy, keep up heart,” they 
cried as she drove off with the doctor’s boy ; 
“ we shall have the little brown house in apple- 
pie order when you come back.” 

The next day the snow was falling thick and 
fast. The big wagon came to the Poplars on 
runners, not on wheels. Uncle Daniel urged 
his nieces to go to his house for a few days, but 
they persisted in making the move. Teddie 
had begun teaching for Mrs. Steele and could 
be at home Saturday and Sunday to help settle. 
Myra had engaged to make two quilts the next 


THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE. 7 1 

day, and Van had three places to go to. for sew- 
ing. They would move at once and take up the 
work of self-support. 

Sha’ n’t one of the boys stay with you for a 
night or two, then ?” 

“ No,” said Van, ‘‘ we are not afraid, and we 
must learn to be alone. Be.sides, we have n’t 
any room or any bed for one of the boys. Get 
our goods moved, uncle, and we ’ll do the rest.” 

The snow thickened and drifted and made 
the work tedious at both ends of the route. 
There were three loads, and then the boys and 
Uncle Daniel were obliged to stop between 
whiles and set up the cook-stove in one room 
below, carrying the pipe up through the bed- 
room above ; and then, in the other down-stairs 
room, the base-burner must be set up and the 
drum arranged in the room overhead. All this 
took much time, and the short November day 
had closed when the last load was brought in. 
All was in confusion at the brown house. 

“ I hate to leave you in such a plight,” said 
Uncle Daniel. 

“ Go quickly or you ’ll not be able to get 
through the drifts,” said Teddie. “ To-morrow 
Ben and Ned are coming to put down our car- 
pets and put up the curtains. Call for us Sun- 
day to go to church and you will see how cosey 
we look. Go now. We have plenty of fuel, 


72 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


g-ood fires, and aunt has sent up a basket of pro- 
visions.” 

Uncle Daniel and his boys left reluctantly 
and heard Van bolt the door of the little brown 
house. 

Teddie lit the lamp ; she could find but one. 
Then she and Van went up stairs to make the 
beds which the boys had set up. They were 
busy for some time making things as orderly as 
they could, filling pitchers, seeking out towels, 
and hanging up clothes. When they came down 
there was Myra sitting behind the kitchen stove, 
her head buried in her arms, crying as if her 
heart would break. Poor Myra’s courage had 
entirely broken down ; an awful home-sickness 
had come over her ; she realized more than ever 
that every fibre of her heart had grown about 
Poplar Rise ; and, moreover, Myra was espe- 
cially the “ mother’s girl ” of the family. She 
had never before been parted from her mother, 
and now, to think of the lost home and the 
severed household was more than she could 
bear. 

“Are you sick ?” cried Van. 

“Are you having neuralgia?” asked Teddie. 

Sobs redoubled on Myra’s part. The sisters 
understood and applied remedies according to 
their nature. 

“ It ’s hard for us all alike,” said Van. “ Brace 


THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE. 73 

up, girl, and do n’t make it worse than it is ; cry- 
ing like a baby wont help matters.” 

“ Cry all you like, my darling, and you ’ll feel 
better for it,” said Teddie, going down on her 
knees on the rough floor and folding her arms 
about her disconsolate sister. “ Something good 
may come to us yet, my dear! Suppose Uncle 
James should buy back the farm ! I ’ll write to 
him again next week, sure.” 

“A good supper will do her more good than 
all the coddling in the world,” said Van. She ’s 
tired and cold and lonesome and discouraged. 
Here, Teddie, move yourself out of the way of 
this oven door. I ’m going to heat up this corn- 
cake, make a good cup of coffee, and broil some 
ham ; and here are some of Aunt Sara Ann’s 
pickles and apple-butter ; we are not likely to go 
hungry at all events.” And Van put up a table- 
leaf, found a tablecloth and dishes and prepared 
her supper, singing in a doleful voice, 

“ For men must work and women must weep. 

And the sooner it *s over the sooner to sleep.” 

Myra still wept on. Teddy gave her a final kiss 
and then set herself to unpacking the dishes and 
kitchen utensils and disposing them in their 
proper places. Teddie as well as Van had her 
song for sorrowful occasions, and now she sang 
it half aloud, giving no heed to Van and her 
strain. 


74 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


“ Last night the queen had four Maries, 

To-night she ’ll have but three : 

There was Mary Seaton and Mary Beaton 
And Mary Carmichael — and me.” 

The wailing of these two tunes, each on its own 
individual account, and commingling with the 
singing of the tea-kettle and the sputter of 
ham, caused Myra to break into hysterical 
laughter. 

“ Come to supper,” said Van, “ and if that 
does n’t settle your nerves I ’ll put you to bed or 
box your ears, I do n’t know which.” 

A comfortable meal eaten leisurely served to 
strengthen and calm the tired and lonely sisters. 
When the supper was over Teddy brought the 
Bible from the side table. Since Uncle Aaron’s 
funeral the girls had in turn read the chapter 
and mamma Milbury had made the prayer. 

“ It is my turn to read to-night,” said Teddie, 
and presently her sweet voice began : “And 
thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord 
thy God led thee in the wilderness, to humble 
thee and to prove thee and to know what was in 
thy heart, whether thou wouldst keep his com- 
mandments or no. And he humbled thee, and 
suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with man- 
na which thou knewest not, neither did thy 
fathers know ; that he might make thee to know 
that man doth not live by bread alone, but by 


THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE. 75 

every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of 
God.” 

‘‘ Teddie,” said Van, “ how came you to think 
of that chapter for to-night ?” 

“ I did n’t think of it,” said Teddie. “ Grand- 
ma said she wished she could be here with us to 
comfort us, but as she could not I was to choose 
for her that chapter which she would read and 
talk over with us if she were here. And we 
must talk of it and get comfort out of it. And 
she sent us a word too ; it is ‘ Honey out of the 
rock.’ ” 

“ Forty years !” sighed Myra. “ Girls, we 
seem to have got into the desert land sure 
enough. What shall we do if it is for forty 
years?” 

Dear Myra,” said Teddie, “ God will not try 
us above what we are able to bear — and — even 
if it should be forty years, you know one grows 
used to almost anything, and the longest time 
looks short when it has gone by. When we get 
to heaven you know all the time in this world 
will seem very short indeed.” 

“ The chapter says ^ to prove thee and know 
what was in thine heart,’ ” said Van. I’m 
afraid that when God is proving me, he will 
find very little patience, courage, faithfulness, 
or submission to his will, and very much of dis- 
content and despair.” 


76 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ To know what is there that should not be, 
and what is not there that should be, is worth 
a great deal,” said Teddie. “ Dear Van, ‘when 
He hath tried me I shall come forth like gold 
it will be yours to say that. And think of that 
verse in James that Uncle Aaron loved so much, 
‘Ye hav^seeh the end of the Lord, that he is 
very pitiful and of tender mercy.’ Van, mother 
is not here ” — 

“I will pray,” said Van. But when they had 
knelt, and for the first time in her life Van tried 
to pray aloud and before others, a sudden sense 
of her helplessness, her sorrows, came upon her, 
and after a few words her voice trailed away 
into sobs. Then Teddie put her arm around 
her sister and took up the supplication : “ Oh, 
Saviour ! help us to know that ‘ these light afflic- 
tions that endure but for a moment work out 
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
of glory.’ ” That was all of Teddie ’s prayer, but 
it was enough. 

Early the next morning the girls were astir, 
but lo, the bread could not be found. 

“ I put it in the tin boiler for the last load,” 
said Myra. 

Teddie, who had very good eyes, descried 
down the road a little hillock in the drift from 
which something white and red flapped in the 
wind. 


THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE. 77 

“I believe,” she said, “that that is a corner 
of the blanket that is around the bread. The 
boiler has fallen off the wagon and is down 
there in the snow.” 

“Well, Myra, come on, we must get it,” said 
Van ; “we cannot lose our six loaves. Give me 
the shovel and broom, Teddie, to. break a road 
out of our door ; we are snowed in.” 

“ I wish we were boys !” panted Myra, as she 
and Van, carrying the derelict boiler between 
them, struggled back through the snow. “At 
least we would be more reasonably dressed for 
such expeditions as this. My skirts and shoes 
are full of snow.” 

“ Here you are,” said Teddie, flinging open 
the door. “ Go quickly and change your shoes 
and get the snow off your clothes ; we dare not 
afford the luxury of being sick. Hurry up, I ’ve 
got a hot breakfast all ready ; our cook-stove 
burns like a daisy.” 

Before breakfast was over Ben anc^Ned 
came in covered with snow, but bringing loving 
messages, and ready to wield hammer and tacks 
in defence of their cousins, the “ Milbury 
maids.” 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


78 


CHAPTER V. 

ADMINISTERING A DEFEAT. 

“ He who from zone to zone 

Guides through the boundless air thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone 
Will lead my steps aright.” 

Monday morning found the three “ Milbury 
maids ” sitting at their breakfast and in a more 
cheerful mood. The work of Saturday had 
brought the little brown house into fair order ; 
the sun was shining ; they had “ rested the Sab- 
bath day,” according to the commandment, and 
were feeling the good effects of it ; Uncle Daniel 
had come by with his great sleigh wherein were 
grandma, Sara Ann, and five boys, and room 
had been found for the three nieces and they 
had all gone to church. 

‘‘ Teddie,” said Van, mashing a potato, “ you 
had the best sense of any of us. When we con- 
cluded that we ought to do something, you 
found something right at hand that was possi- 
ble and you went to work. I only talked, and 
Myra put off. You did what you ought to 
do.” 

“ But I found the suggestion of this very 
thing in that book that you so unceremoniously 


ADMINISTERING A DEFEAT. 


' 79 

tossed into the corner and broke off the cover. 
That book told me to do something ; not to waste 
time wishing and planning, but to take the sim- 
ple thing near at hand and reasonable, do it 
well, and make it a stepping-stone to the next 
thing.” 

Miss Milbury blushed a little, remembering 
her destructiveness. 

“You cannot be surprised that Van should 
be guilty of a vandalism,’* observed Myra 
coolly. 

“ But my theory was right,” said Van, brist- 
ling up ; “ it was right if the canon in literature 
is correct, that one must write of what one 
knows.” 

“ Question is of the limits of what we may 
know,” said Teddie. “A person may know of a 
thing without being it. A lady may write a 
good and reasonable book about the duties of 
servants without having been a servant. The 
‘ looker-on in Venice ’ may see some things even 
more clearly than the Venetians. Given good 
natural sense, good education, good powers of 
observation, good intentions, a person may write 
a good book about women, even if the person is 
so unfortunate as to be — a man ! And there is 
something useful in almost every book.” 

“Dear me!” cried Van, “how independent 
and argumentative you are growing! Once 


8o 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


you took my word for law ; now it seems you 
are setting up for yourself.” 

“I’m a bloated aristocrat with my two dol- 
lars a week,” said Teddie, “ and I must be off to 
earn it. Sorry I cannot have the pleasure of 
staying to wash the dishes for you. But the tea 
dishes shall be my part. The road is pretty well 
broken, isn’t it?” 

“ It seems cruel for you to have to go out in 
such cold and in deep snow, and for such beg- 
garly pay !” said Myra mournfully. 

“ I do n’t mind it ; I’m strong,” said Teddie. 

But here there was a vigorous stamping on 
the door-step, and in came Ned with a bottle of 
milk. 

“ Halloa, girls ! How ’s all here ? Give me 
the shovel while I make paths for you.” 

So to work went Ned, shovelled out paths, 
pumped two pails of water, put coal on the fire, 
and filled an extra scuttle. 

“Any fire in the other room for me to see 
to?” 

“No, you jewel of a boy, we are being eco- 
nomical, and while the mammy is not here we 
shall keep only one fire. This room looks 
pretty well to live in,” said Van. 

“ I should say it did,” cried Ned — “ real 
cosey,” and he looked about the little kitchen 
sitting-room. The stove was shining, and upon 


ADMINISTERING A DEFEAT. 8 1 

it hissed a resplendent copper kettle ; curtains 
of fancy-colored muslin were draped away from 
the two windows, two pots of blooming gera- 
nium stood in the sunshine, the rag carpet was 
new and bright, the sewing-machine stood near 
a window, the side table had a red cover, here 
and there were bags, racks, little ornaments 
which had helped to beautify the Poplar Rise 
homestead. The whole place told its tale of 
being the abode of young and refined women. 
Our surroundings take the mould of ourselves 
as the wax takes the impression of the seal. 

“Teddie,” said Ned, “you’re not afraid of 
horses, and Turk is gentle ; get on behind me 
and ride pillion in old-fashioned style to Steele’s. 
It will be much better than walking in the 
snow.” 

Away they went, the rosy laughing Teddie 
clinging to Ned’s waist, her light curls blowing 
about her shoulders from under her black 
hood. 

“ Darling Teddie !” cried Myra, “ she ought 
to have everything that is luxurious and beauti- 
ful, and not be going off to Steele’s to slave for 
those three saucy little imps.” 

“ Nonsense, Myra,” said Van, “ the Steele 
children are fairly nice, and no doubt the Lord 
is as much interested in Teddie as we are and 
knows even better than we do what is good for 
6 


82 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


her. Let us hurry up with the housework and 
I ’ll help you get that comfortable in the frames. 
To-morrow I am going to Mrs. Deems’ to sew 
for three days, and to. be there early enough in 
the morning I must stay all night. I ’ll tell Ned 
to stay here while I ’m gone. He ’ll be that 
much nearer school.” 

Ned was the third of Uncle Daniel’s boys, 
the bookish boy of the six, going through the 
village high-school and hoping to go through 
college and become a journalist. Daniel, the 
second son, was in Westchester learning print- 
ing. Ben was the right hand of his father, the 
farmer of the family. 

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday — what long 
days those were to Van Milbury as she sewed 
for Mrs. Deems. It was one thing to cut and 
baste and stitch for the home folks, chatting the 
while merrily with the sisters, taking counsel 
over abstruse points with the mother, disputing 
in lively fashion with Myra or Teddie as the 
shining needle flew up and down and the white 
seams travelled off under the steel foot of the 
machine — this was one thing, and hiring out for 
a day’s sewing was quite another. True, Mrs. 
Deems was kindness itself, told Van just what 
she wanted, and sat helping and talking with 
her as sister with sister. But Van was so afraid 
of making mistakes, or of not giving Mrs. 


ADMINISTERING A DEFEAT. 


83 

Deems the full worth of her money! It fairly 
made her nervous. Thursday night she went 
back to the little brown house after dark, riding 
with a neighbor who was going that way. 

The girls had finished supper, and Ned had 
gone home. Teddie was busy working out prob- 
lems in the Normal arithmetic, Myra was setting 
sponge for bread. The two precipitated them- 
selves on Van and welcomed her as if home from 
foreign wars. 

“ See here,” said Van, after she had put away 
her wraps and seated herself by the lamp, “here 
are my first earnings. I am twenty-two years 
old, sound in body and mind, of good family, 
and had, until within six months, supposed that 
I was properly educated. I have worked eleven 
hours a day, minus meal-times, for three days, 
and here are all my wages — one paper dollar and 
eighty cents in silver. Here ’s richness !” 

Myra and Teddie flung themselves upon 
Van, petted and patted her, called her a “ poor 
dear,” a “ darling,” a “ treasure.” It was their 
way of consoling each other. Van laughed, 
pushed the pair off, looked brave. 

“ Anyway,” said Myra, returning to the bread 
sponge, “ we have not had to spend a cent this 
week, and Teddie’s work has more than paid for 
the rent. Besides, I Ve made money. See here ! 
a silver dollar for two comfortables, duly sewed. 


84 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


knotted, and finished, by my ten fingers, and 
carried off by Mrs. Carey.” 

“ Two dollars and eighty cents, and I shall 
have a dollar and a quarter beyond the rent ; four 
dollars and five cents for the week’s work of 
three able-bodied, refined young women,” said 
Teddie, doing mental arithmetic. “ Well, I see 
our aunt Harriet was right: girls should be 
trained to do well something of practical money- 
bringing value.” 

“ Who is that coming to the door !” said Myra, 
“ not a robber?” 

Robbers never come to poor folks,” said 
Van, opening the door. 

The guest was the son of the farmer where 
Mrs. Milbury was nursing. He had brought a 
letter from their mother, and sat by the fire 
while they read and answered it. 

“ I came for medicine,” explained the lad, 
“ and brought the letter, and she says for one of 
you to come and spend Thanksgiving with her. 
Father will be over to church, and fetch the one 
of you that goes out to our house in the sleigh.” 

What a beautiful boy this was, bringing let- 
ters and invitations ! They considered that thing 
in the “ plural of excellence.” Teddie fed him 
with apples and doughnuts, while Van and Myra 
concocted a very cheerful reply to the absent 
mother, telling her that they were becoming 


ADMINISTERING A DEFEAT. 85 

quite rich, and that Myra could go to her on 
Thanksgiving, and the other two would spend 
the day at Uncle Daniel’s.* They hurried with 
the letter so as not to detain the boy. 

“ You ’d better not be quite so keerless open- 
in’ your door after dark,” he said as he rose to 
go. “ S’pose I ’d ’a’ bin a tramp ?” 

“ Pooh !” said Van courageously ; but they all 
felt lonely after the echo of the boy’s whistle 
died away on the frosty air. 

The girls were becoming somewhat accus- 
tomed to their new manner of life by the time 
they had been a month in the little brown house 
and their mother came home. They made a 
feast of that occasion. A fire was built in the 
base-burner in the sitting-room , Aunt Sara Ann 
sent over a basket of pies, cake, and a roasted 
chicken , the girls put on their best gowns and 
their most cheerful faces. The sitting-room was 
furnished with the pretty ingrain carpet that had 
been on Van’s bedroom, the sofa, table, and 
chairs which Mrs. Milbury had brought to the 
Poplars when she was married; a large what- 
not, a Christmas gift to their mother from the 
three girls two years ‘before, stood in one corner 
and became a bookcase. Several pictures hung 
on ] the wall, fancy-work that the girls had 
wrought on in the garret at the Poplars, mantel 
ornaments which Uncle Aaron had brought 


86 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


home after his semi-annnal trip to the city ; thus 
the exiled maids had furbished up their sitting- 
room, and warm and bright, and echoing with 
their welcome, their tired mother found it pleas- 
ant indeed. 

There was so much to tell — all that had hap- 
pened to the girls, all that Mrs. Milbury had ex- 
perienced in her first absence from her daugh- 
ters. 

And let us count our money !” cried Teddie. 
“ Mamma, you are the millionaire of the occa- 
sion, you begin.” 

Mrs. Milbury laid down twenty dollars. To 
this Teddie added five ; the other three dollars of 
her “ eight dollars a month ” salary had gone for 
rent. Myra added four dollars, and Van six. 

“Thirty-five dollars and the rent for our 
month’s work,” said Van. 

“ Only think,” said Myra unguardedly, as she 
looked at the little heap of silver and paper, 
“ last year if any one of us had wanted that 
much. Uncle Aaron would have handed it over 
to us without a word, dear blessed man that he 
was!” And as none of them were of heroic 
mould, down went four heads at this reminder, 
and there was weeping, rather for lost Uncle 
Aaron than for lost home and fortunes. 

“ I declare, this is a shame 1” said Van, the 
first to recover herself ; “ crying the first evening 


ADMINISTERING A DEFEAT. 8/ 

the poor little mammy ’s back. And we meant 
to have everything so cheerful! Myra, you 
ought to be sent to bed in the dark for your mis- 
behavior !” 

“ Never mind,” said Mrs. Milbury, “ we must 
all have our times of looking back and grieving, 
and we would n’t forget Uncle Aaron if we could. 
We have plenty to cry over, and also plenty to 
be very thankful for. This is a very cosey little 
home, and we are well, and thirty-five dollars is 
not a sum to be despised. But, my daughters, in 
these nights lately, when I have been wakeful 
with my patient, I have been doing some think- 
ing for all of us, and one of the things I have 
thought of is that we must not dwell on our 
sorrows and disappointments; that will only 
weaken power and courage. We must fix our 
thoughts chiefly upon our mercies and all that 
we have to be thankful for. The apostle tells us 
in everything by prayer and supplication with 
thanksgiving to let our requests be made known 
unto God. Now that suggests that we have 
much cause for thanksgiving in every lot. It 
will help us also to remember that even our 
trials are God’s way of doing us good, and that 
‘ affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither 
doth trouble spring out of the ground.’ Let us 
also think that if we are not likely to grow rich in 
this world’s goods we can ‘ be rich in faith and 


88 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised 
to them that love him.’ Now that is my little 
sermon.” 

'‘And a good little sermon it is,” said the 
girls, and after sitting in thoughtful silence by 
their mother for a time they returned to the 
other affairs of their firm. 

“Yes,” said Myra, who in spite of herself 
seemed doomed to croak that night, “ but every 
month mammy cannot be out and earn twenty 
dollars ; she ’d be killed if she tried it. See how 
tired she looks ! And this month we have spent 
nothing, and have eaten up nearly all we brought 
from the Poplars. We must have a barrel of 
flour next week, and meat, and the coal will not 
hold out over next month.” 

“ Myra, will you be still !” cried Van ; “ you 
are positively wicked and unscriptural. Does n’t 
it say, ‘ Take no thought for the morrow, for the 
morrow shall take thought for the things of it- 
self,’ and ‘ Your Father knoweth that ye have 
need of all these things ’ ? It is well that to- 
morrow will be Sunday, so you can go to church 
and lay in enough religious common sense to 
carry you through the week.” 

Mrs. Milbury smiled at Van and patted 
Myra’s cheek. Teddie ran into the other room 
and came back with a dish of cracked walnuts, 
which Uncle Daniel’s boys had contributed for 


ADMINISTERING A DEFEAT. 89 

the family festival. Then she brought a basket 
of apples and a corn-popper, a dish, and some 
shelled pop-corn. 

“ Come now, girls,” she said, arrange the 
table, and which of you will shake the popper 
over the coals in the base-burner? These are 
^ the mammy’s favorite apples, and we are going 
to sit up till ten o’clock, and I shall tell you all 
the horrid and all the funny things the Steele 
children have done. Last Sunday, in the infant 
class. Judge Deems was talking to the young- 
sters about serving God, and he pointed to Tom- 
my Steele and said, ‘ When will you be old 
enough to love God ?’ And Tommy rose up in 
his place and replied loudly, ‘ Next year, when I 
get into pants, judge.’ I was teaching Minnie 
Steele to say ‘ Now I lay me,’ and when we got 
to ‘ I pray the Lord my soul to take,’ she said, 
‘ Take where^ Teddie ?’ ‘ To heaven,’ I said. 

■‘Well, I don’t want to go,’ she said. ‘I don’t 
believe they have any rabbits up there, and I 
do n’t like blue anyway, and I wont go. I ’ll say 
it “ Pray the Lord my soul not to take. ’ And 
we can’t get her to say it any other way.” 

The popping of the corn over the coals kept 
time to Teddie’s anecdotes, and the Milbury 
family began to be cheerful. 

‘'There ’s one thing,” said Van, the next day 
at breakfast, “ that we may say for ourselves and 


90 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


our neighbors. You know in stories and in 
books it is always stated that when people lose 
their money and get poor and girls have to go 
out and work, their friends fall away from them 
and slight them. Now with us it has not been 
so in a single case. To begin with the minister, 
Mr. and Mrs. Lowell have been to see us much ^ 
oftener than ever before.” 

“ Well, we are nearer them,” said Teddie, 

“ and we are ourselves more friendly with them, 
and we are at Sunday-school and prayer-meeting 
and at evening church. We give them more en- 
couragement. I suppose that ministers and their 
wives cannot go on for ever being intimate with 
folks who give them no encouragement.” 

“ It is the same with other people,” said Van ; 

“ folks were never so friendly, never had so 
much to say to me as they do now.” 

“ Well, Van, some of the reason for that may 
be in yourself. You see people are now less 
afraid of you. You have always had a sort of 
stand-off, high-and-mighty way with you that 
kept people at a distance. Now that does n’t go 
so far. People sympathize with us, and wont be 
put off with a cool nod.” 

“ There is something in all that,” said Mrs. 
Milbury, “but after all I think people are less 
inclined to neglect the unfortunate, and treat 
those coldly who have had losses, than we give 


ADMINISTERING A DEFEAT. 


91 


them credit for. I know, for my part, I was al- 
ways more to people who were in trouble. As 
long as folks had no need of me I might think 
little about them, but the people who needed 
me were the people I went to.” 

“ Mrs. Deems was saying yesterday,” said 
Myra, “that she did wish that the world had 
something better for women to do than toil at a 
little cheap sewing when they are left to earn a 
support. She wished we could find really profit- 
able employment, Women seem so shut out, 
she says.” 

“ That is not so,” said Teddie warmly ; “ they 
are only shut out by their own prejudices, or 
their own carelessness in not providing them- 
selves an occupation, as young men do. People 
talk as if in Bible times women were crippled 
and harassed and hemmed in. I don’t think 
they were. I ’d like to see any modern woman 
rule her house with a higher hand than Sarah 
did. When Jacob meant to make a move, he 
called Rachel and Leah to the field to consult 
them ; in one of the prophets it says that God 
sent before Israel ‘ Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.' 
Miriam is put with her great brothers as a leader. 
I think I told you before that Deborah judged 
Israel, as well as led an army, and Huldah was 
a prophet and consulted by the king and his 
princes. The queen of Sheba ruled a kingdom, 


92 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


and Jezebel ran her husband s kingdom as she 
chose, and made a mess of it. There was noth- 
ing to hinder them from doing what they could 
and would. The wise woman of Tekoah came 
to Joab’s help, and the Shunammite woman man- 
aged her own affairs. In history it has been the 
same ; great nations served queens just as well 
as they did kings : women were college profes- 
sors and artists and poets and authors, and led 
armies and were doctors. If you ’ll remember, 
there was an age when all Europe was ruled by 
women — in 1560 and a while after. Elizabeth 
ruled England ; Mary Stuart, Scotland ; Portugal 
was ruled by the Infanta ; France by Catharine 
de’ Medici ; Spain by its French queen Isabella, 
daughter of Henry II. ; Navarre by Jeanne d’ Al- 
bert ; Holland by the daughter of Charles V. I 
was studying it all up this week. I think, take 
it all in all, women when they are hampered 
and restrained, are hampered and restrained by 
themselves and their sisters; and when they 
can and will do anything well, it is open to them 
to do it. Trouble is, most women drift, just as 
we have drifted. They forget that they owe the 
Lord work as well as words.” 

Teddie was quite flushed and eloquent. 

“ Bravo, Teddie !” cried her sisters, clapping 
their hands. 

Slowly the winter lapsed. Christmas and 


ADMINISTERING A DEFEAT. 


93 

New Year’s reversed the long-honored order of 
Milbury exercises, and now the maids and their 
mother went to Uncle Daniel’s, and he and the 
boys and Sara Ann exerted themselves to make 
the maids forget that now they had no ample, 
well-provided home in which to entertain the 
Milbury family great and small. They never 
went to Uncle Daniel’s without getting an un- 
spoken lesson from the valor and resignation of 
grandma, half of whose heart had gone into the 
grave of Aaron her first-born, but who with 
steadfast courage strove to do all that she could 
for those left to her, and, like Job, “murmured 
not, nor charged God foolishly.” 

Mamma Milbury was sometimes away for 
two weeks, sometimes for three, sometimes at 
home for as long. Teddie brought home five 
dollars monthly and kept a roof over their heads, 
and Myra and Van averaged about two dollars 
and a quarter - a week each with their needles. 
People in that vicinity owned sewing-machines 
and hired very little sewing but dress and cloak 
making, which the Milbury girls did not know 
how to do. 

And how this miserably paid sewing tired 
Van ! Van like many another was fighting 
against masterful nature without knowing of 
her error. “Oh how I hate this sewing!” she 
would sometimes cry out at night. “ It tires me 


94 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


so! I had much rather work on a wall, like 
Shallum’s daughters. I believe I had even rather 
make brick !” 

It had never occurred to any one that these 
girls as children should have been studied and 
taught to do that for which mentally and phys- 
ically they were best fitted. A deal of superflu- 
ous energy was thrown away by Van and Myra 
as they sewed, and sewing wore on them. They 
felt as if they had lost ground in every way that 
winter; they thought so. But their minister 
did not think so ; he saw character daily matu- 
ring, and spiritual experiences growing deeper 
and richer. They were not girls given to much 
speech about religion, but theirs was a noble, 
simple daily living out of Christianity. 


‘frost’s extremity.” 


95 


CHAPTER VI. 

“frost’s extremity.” 

“ If as a flower doth spread and die, 

Thou woudst extend to me some good 
Before I were by frost’s extremitie 

Nipt in the bud.” George Herbert. 

To be young and active, habituated to and 
fond of out-of-door life, and then to be obliged 
to sit all day long bent over a sewing-machine, 
making sheets, pillow-cases, and shams — there 
is a certain hardness in this fate. To be scrupu- 
lously conscientious, desirous to do well what is 
done, and give the most honest of work for 
wage ; to be high-spirited, and averse to being a 
recipient of charity, and yet to feel more than a 
suspicion that your best work is not up to the 
highest grade even of plain sewing; to have 
your suspicions about the accuracy of your tuck- 
ing and the beauty of your ruffling more than 
confirmed by the scarcely hidden annoyance of 
your employer and the little lines of dissatisfac- 
tion drawn about her mouth ; to be made some- 
how to feel that the work is given to you out of 
kindness, while others would do it far better — 
there is a certain hardness in this fate. And 
then to start out for a mile walk in the dark. 


96 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


alone and unprotected after years of tenderest 
protection ; to go against a sharp wind sleet- 
laden, and feel that your clothing is too thin, 
and that the slush of the trodden mid-road is 
creeping into a hole in your overshoes and ma- 
king your feet wet with an icy wetness — there is 
a certain hardness in this fate. 

All this hardness fell to the lot of Van Mil- 
bury, one winter’s day when she had been work- 
ing for Mrs. Gore, and had started home before 
tea because Mrs. Gore was “ going to have com- 
pany to supper,” and Van was not invited to 
stay. Van instinctively felt that she was not 
invited partly because Mrs. Gore was vexed 
about the sewing, and partly because Van’s 
black gown was shabby, and she was no longer 
Miss Milbury of Poplar Rise, but a seamstress. 

It is undoubtedly true that the hardness of 
our fates, in its true errand to our souls, should 
be as furnace fires to raise to nobler grade the 
common metal that is in us ; but when one is 
young and unused to the discipline of life, and 
feels the present pain rather than perceives the 
possible harvest, wrath and repining are apt to 
get uppermost in the heart. 

Van, struggling along the dark, cold, uneven 
way, felt a dumb rage against her surroundings 
and as if she hated Mrs. Gore. 

When she reached the little cottage, affairs 


frost's extremity. 


97 


were not reassuring. True there was a good 
fire, and Myra hastened to take off Van’s shoes 
and put on dry stockings and slippers for her 
and help her into a thick wrapper — their joint 
property. Then Myra put tea and toast on the 
table, and said that Teddie had gone to Mr. 
Lowell’s to stay all night. 

But as Myra sat down to pour the tea and 
the lamplight fell strongly on her face, Van 
saw that she had been crying. This started 
up afresh the train of Van’s own grievances, and 
as a very curious way of administering comfort 
to Myra she burst forth into an account of 
her own afflictions. “ And what has happened 
here ?” she demanded ; “ something has, I know. 
You have been crying; you needn’t deny it, 
Myra.” 

“ Miss Prudy Little was in here,” replied 
Myra, and she said she saw mother yesterday 
at Mrs. Saxon’s, and mother did not look well ; 
and Miss Prudy asked if it was absolutely neces- 
sary for mother to go out nursing. She said 
mother nearly fainted yesterday, and if we did 
not take care we ’d lose her ! Oh, Van ! Just as 
if we wanted mother to go out nursing, or as if 
we were n’t willing to take care of her, if only 
we could !” 

Myra fled to the lounge and hid her face in 
the pillows for another cry. Myra was a genu- 
7 


Adam’s Daughters. 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


98 

ine mother-girl ; to Myra her mother was all the 
world. Van returned to the stove, and putting 
her still benumbed feet on the hearth, sat mood- 
ily gazing at the twinkle through the isinglass 
doors. She could not relieve her rage and grief 
by crying; her heart grew harder and harder 
every minute ; she felt as if “ bound in fetters 
and iron,” and while called upon to work out a 
deliverance for her mother and sisters, yet una- 
ble to move hand or foot. The girls needed 
Teddie with her Faith and Hope and Love — 
three graces that hourly attended her virgin 
soul. But Teddie was at the minister’s. 

There was a knock at the door, as if with a 
whip-handle. Van opened it and a man stepped 
in, the sleet clinging to his red beard and fur 
cap. He moved towards the stove, saying, 
“ Don’t you know me? I ’m Timothy Drumm. 
Reckon you saw me up at what you called Pop- 
ple Rise. I used to be there now and then, hav- 
ing dealings with your uncle Aaron.” 

“ Oh,” said Van, coming back to the stove. 
“ Take a seat, wont you, Mr. Drumm ?” 

Myra straightened herself up. Mr. Drumm 
stood by the stove. Looks pretty comf’able 
here ; fire feels good too. Thank y’, I can’t sit. 
I just called in to ask when you could settle this 
little bill of your uncle Aaron’s.” And he held 
across the stove a soiled strip of paper. 


“ FROST’S EXTREMITY. 


99 


Van took it with a sinking heart. It was a 
bill for a pair of oxen ; price one hundred and 
twenty dollars. Van remembered the oxen, 
Raspberry and Blackberry Teddie had named 
them; and Timothy Drumm had driven them 
into the yard one summer day, about a year be- 
fore Uncle Aaron died. 

“There’s some mistake,” said Van; “Uncle 
Aaron never let bills stand. He must have paid 
this.” 

“ No he did n’t. I brought them to him just 
before the crops were sold ; and he laid out to 
pay me when he sold his wheat, and he did n’t 
sell till* late that year ; and one way and another 
I did n’t call for the money ; and so it went.” 

“Why didn’t you bring your bill in when 
we were settling up then ?” cried Van excitedly. 

“Well,” said Mr. Drumm, twisting his cap 
uneasily, and winking a good deal to get the 
sleet out of his eyes, “ I says to my old woman, 

‘ Milburys is honest folks, and Adam’s gals wont 
see wrong done, nor no dishonesty lying against 
Aaron, I says ; and I a’n’t so hard set for that 
money but what I can wait till they have time 
to turn themselves. So I waited. But now I ’ve 
got my mortgage to pay, and I ’ve got to have 
that money. Sharp’s the word, now,” he added, 
gathering courage from Van’s overwhelmed 
expression. “ I ’ve been real patient.” 


lOO 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ It has been paid ! I know it was paid !” 
cried Van angrily. 

“ Is that bill receipted then ?” demanded 
Drumm. 

Van was silent. 

“ If you Ve got a receipt show it, and in 
course I ’ll back down. I do n’t want my money 
twice,” said the creditor. 

Mr. Drumm, judged by his hard face, was not 
the man to have showed either the consideration 
or the carelessness about his business which 
his account indicated. Myra came and bent 
over Van’s shoulder; evidently the bill had not 
been receipted, and it was rumpled and soiled. 
They could not remember that Uncle Aaron 
ever spoke of having paid for the oxen, but he 
had said that he had taken them “ earlier than 
he needed them for the fall ploughing, because 
Drumm had more stock than he could take care 
of.” Drumm was neither thrifty nor popular. 

“ Now see here. Miss Milbury, I ’ve got to 
have my money, and I wont stand being cheated 
neither,” spoke up Drumm. 

The word “ cheated ” fired Van. Cheated ! 
when all the Milburys had been the very soul of 
honor ; and now the name of poor generous 
Uncle Aaron was in the keeping of the Milbury 
maids ! 

“We never cheat!” cried Van; “we leave 


“FROST’S EXTREMITY.” lOI 

that for other people. I must see Uncle Daniel 
about this.” 

“ It is none of Daniel Milbury’s affairs,” said 
Timothy. 

“ It is his affair to advise us, and we always 
go to him,” said Myra. “ He will perhaps know 
if this bill has been paid.” 

“It hasn’t been paid, I tell you,” said Tim- 
othy. 

“Certainly we have not the money in the 
house to settle it now,” said Van. “You can 
leave it and come again.” 

“ I Ve got to have it precious soon.” 

“You can come again Saturday,” said Van. 

When their guest was gone Van and Myra, 
with more serious troubles to think of than they 
had had an hour before, sat by the fire consider- 
ing how, if this were a just debt, that is, if they 
could not prove it unjust, they could pay it when 
they had nothing wherewith to pay. A hundred 
and twenty dollars ! What a sum it seemed to 
them. 

Early next morning Van set off for Uncle 
Daniel’s. Her heart was so full of care that she 
scarcely noticed the sharp wind, the hard roads, 
the length of the way. She hurried by the gate 
of Poplar Rise with the usual pang of home- 
sickness, and all the kindest ministrations of 
grandma and Aunt Sara Ann could not drive 


102 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


the hunted look from her eyes nor take the hard 
lines from around her mouth. 

Uncle Daniel heard her story, examined the 
dirty bill, and could not remember having heard 
Aaron say that the bill had been paid. Tim 
Drumm is a rascal,” said Uncle Daniel, “ and up 
to anything; but I don’t recollect that there 
was any receipt for the money for those oxen in 
Aaron’s papers.” 

Uncle Aaron had had so few papers ; he had 
not been very business-like in some of his meth- 
ods. However, what few papers there were were 
here in Uncle Daniel’s desk, and he and Van 
looked them all over before dinner. 

“ I ’m dreadfully afraid we ’ll have to pay 
that,” said Uncle Daniel. “ Tim Drumm is not 
a man to be kept out of his money, and I wont 
have poor Aaron’s good name at his mercy.” 

‘‘ But how can we pay it ?” said Van with a 
dry sob. 

“ I reckon I can borrow it of Miss Prudy ; 
she has some money to put out just now,” said 
Uncle Daniel, and he did not know that he gave 
a patient sigh at the thought of this new debt. 

“ But then we can never pay you cried 
Van. “We don’t make more than we live on 
now.” 

“Never mind, child.” said Aunt Sara Ann; 
“ we ’ll get on.” 


“ frost’s extremity. 


103 


“ The Lord will show us some way out,” said 
grandma, with the bright look so like Teddie’s. 

At that moment Mr. Summers came in. 
Van had not thought that the politics of her 
State would have anything to do with her way 
of making a living ; but Uncle Daniel unfolded 
the present difficulty to Mr. Summers, and Mr. 
Summers was running for State Senator, and he 
saw his way clearly to accommodate Uncle Dan- 
iel and Timothy. He advised that Timothy be 
paid, and he offered to find Van a position where 
she could earn the whole sum desired in six or 
eight months and make her living beside. 

“ My brother-in-law near Harrisburgh,” said 
Mr. Summers, “ is a doctor and keeps a Sanita- 
rium, or * Retreat for Nervous Patients.’ It is a 
very elegant, high-toned place, and every pa- 
tient has an attendant to sit contentedly with 
her and talk to her and entertain her. No me- 
nial service is expected except a little friendly 
waiting on, and everything is provided. Pay is 
sixteen dollars the first month, and then twenty 
or so. I’ll write to my brother-in-law at once 
and get Miss Milbury a -vacancy.” 

Mr. Summers offered to take Van home in 
his sleigh, and on the way he talked very cheer- 
fully of the pleasantness of the position, the 
good that might be done in it by a right-minded 
occupant, and the handsome sum that might be 


104 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

made in a year. Van’s spirits rose and she was 
prepared to argue down all Myra’s objections. 

On Saturday morning Uncle Daniel was at 
the little brown house to pay Timothy Drumm 
his hundred and twenty dollars and “ take a right 
tight receipt for it this ttme,” he said meaningly. 
Timothy shrank a little, but made no reply as 
with many contortions of his face and shoulders 
he signed his name on the dirty strip of paper. 

Uncle Daniel had brought Van a letter from 
Dr. Morton. Could she come by the next Fri- 
day ? He had a very interesting patient to com- 
mit to her care. He understood Miss Milbury 
had recently met with a loss ; she could sympa- 
thize with her charge then ; but he must warn 
her to be very cheery and smiling ; also, proba- 
bly she was in black. While with the patient 
black was not desirable ; would she bring a dress 
in either plaid or blue or red ? Miss Ames, the 
patient, liked those colors and so on. 

Myra twisted up her face a little. “ Go if 
you will. Van, but you ’ll never do for that place. 
If you are wise you ’ll just send Teddie in your 
stead. Teddie could — ” 

Could what? Van suspected what was hid- 
den in this elliptical form of speech ; she knew 
wherein Myra suspected that Van would prove 
insufficient to the task which she imposed upon 
herself, and wherein little Teddie would be 


“ frost's extremity.” 


105 


strong-. But a certain fury had possessed Van 
against the sewing-machine and Mistress Gore 
and all the narrow miseries of her lot. She 
wanted to break the envious bars of fate and 
fashion something better in her life. Go she 
would and in her own strength too. She looked 
loftily at Myra and responded that she “ should 
not leave Teddie to do her work.” 

“All right,” said the easily relenting Myra, 
putting her arms about poor Van, who had a 
certain forlorn ness in the midst of her assumed 
dignity. “ Bless her, she will do finely her own 
self ! But, Van, how about the expenses of the 
trip and the goodly Babylonish garments which 
you must wear ?” 

Uncle Daniel had gone his way and the girls 
were alone. 

“ Eight dollars will do it,” said Van, “ four 
for the trip and four for the goods. There is 
some pretty dark red stuff quite cheap at the 
store, and we can make the dress ourselves in 
three days. Mrs. Lowell will lend me patterns, 
and we ’ll make it elegantly.” 

“ But the eight dollars ?” urged Myra. 

“ I must borrow them of Mrs. Lowell,” said 
Van stoutly, “ and I will send them back out of 
my first month’s salary.” 

“ I see you must be well dressed at this sty- 
lish place,” said Myra. “ I have two pairs of 


I06 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

nice gloves, and my best patent-leather shoes, 
you shall have them ; and Teddie will surely 
give you her two best white aprons that she 
trimmed with tatting.” 

“Yes, I shall rob you both,” said Van bit- 
terly. 

“ Never mind ; when you come home in a 
year with two hundred dollars you can pay 
Uncle Daniel his hundred and twenty and buy 
no end of things for the rest of us with the other 
eighty. I shall need a new dress by then.” 

O Almaschar, how often do the daughters of 
men repeat in their own experiences thy story 
and build their hopes on a basket of glassware ! 

It was Myra that went to Mrs. Saxon’s and 
secured the mother’s consent to Van’s departure 
and skilfully concealed the story of Timothy 
Drumm’s bill. It was Myra that kept up Van’s 
courage and put no end of beautiful briar-stitch- 
ing on the new gown. Finally, it was Myra 
that saw Van to the train on Friday morning 
and courageously went home alone. 

But it was Van who went forth alone among 
strangers, the first Milbury maid departing from 
the home-roof to make her way in the world, far 
from the counsels of the mother, the strong care- 
taking of Uncle Daniel, the sweet ministrations 
of her sisters, the blessed influences of that eld- 
est saint of their household, dear grandma, 


'‘FROST'S EXTREMITY." 107 

rooted and grounded in faith by the hard shock 
of many a life-storm. Oh how forlorn and mis- 
erable poor Van felt! She shivered at the 
thought of meeting strangers ; she found in her- 
self a sudden unfitness for these new duties; 
she had a terror at thinking that her trunk- 
check and fifty cents in her pocket represented 
all her fortune ! 

People had been wont to call Van “ the proud 
Miss Milbury " just as they had called Teddie 
" the pretty Miss Milbury." There had been a 
certain amount of self-sufficiency in Van, and 
now all at once this gave way before an over- 
whelming self-distrust. She wished she had let 
Teddie take the place. She wished she could 
stop the cars and run back home. But what was 
it that grandma had whispered last night when 
she clasped her tall granddaughter in her arms 
and bade her good-by ? " The Master go with 
you, child, and make you a blessing." Oh 
thought of supreme consolation ! Not alone. 
" I will never leave thee nor forsake thee !" 
One who held all time and all eternity, all hu- 
man hearts and human destinies, in his keeping 
had pledged himself to be with her to the end. 
How close Van Milbury drew to her Lord that 
day as the miles of her journey lengthened on ! 

Van had never entered such a luxurious 
house as that of Dr. Morton. The doctor’s pri- 


I08 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

vate carriage waited for her at the station, the 
doctor’s footman in livery opened for her the 
front door and with a cool stare led her to the 
office, where he was very obsequious to the doc- 
tor. 

Rich portieres hung over all the doorways ; 
colored glass windows shed rainbow - tinted 
light ; statuary holding vases or baskets of 
blooming flowers or trailing vines occupied the 
corners of the halls and the turns of the stair- 
cases ; the carpets were velvet ; a profusion of 
elegant trifles lay here and there, wherever they 
would be most effective. Van felt lost in the 
largeness and magnificence. Oh for the little 
brown house ! Oh for Myra’s stout heart and 
Teddie’s caress ! Oh for mother ! 

Dr. Morton was courteous and soft-spoken to 
a marvel. He took Van’s hand gently, as if she 
were a patient whose pulse must be felt, without 
seeming to do so; he looked into her eyes to 
read her state of mind, while his own were in- 
scrutable. * 

“ I am glad you have come,” he said. “ Miss 
Nellie Ames’ other attendant leaves this even- 
ing. , She must have some one I can trust with 
her. Mr. Summers says I can trust you. Please 
attend to what I tell you of your patient. She 
is twenty-five ; very lovely girl, very wealthy, 
very melancholy. You must keep her in good 


'' frost’s extremity.” 109 

spirits, amuse her, talk to her; do not let her 
brood. You will sit with her, ride with her, sleep 
on a couch in her room. Above all things watch 
her, but do not let her see that you do ; occupy 
her mind ; try to make her fond of you.” 

“ But what am I to watch ?” asked Van. 

“ See that she does not harm herself. I must 
request you not to have a pocket-knife nor any 
but small round-pointed scissors, and never leave 
any knives or forks to tempt her. If she does 
not wish to go to her meals, then you will take 
them to her and coax her to eat them. Keep 
her so entertained that she will not observe that 
she is eating.” 

“But what is the matter with Miss Ames ?” 
demanded Van. 

“ She is morbid, melancholy, does not want 
to live. We fear she will become insane. Her 
family are terribly anxious about her. She is a 
very cultivated girl, worth half a million.” 

“ What is the cause of her state ?” asked Van, 
less overawed by the half-million than Dr. Mor- 
ton had expected her to be. 

“ She lost her father and her brother within 
a year of each other, and she has been very 
wretched since, she is so sensitive.” 

“ Has she no family left ?” asked Van, inter- 
ested. 

“ Oh yes, she has two sisters and a brother, 


I lO 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


all fond of her. The brother and one sister are 
married.” 

After this Dr. Morton rang for a maid to 
show Miss Milbury up to a room next that of 
Miss Ames, where she was to unpack her trunk, 
put on her red gown, and prepare to meet her 
patient. Van hardly noticed the luxury of the 
room, with the private bath-room opening from 
it, she was so lost in contemplating the, to her, 
singular case of Miss Ames. Living among 
plain and active people. Van had never before 
come upon an instance of irreconcilable quarrel 
with death, or the Lord of death. 

‘‘ Nice room,” said the maid, “ our best suite. 
Miss Ames is the richest patient ; she pays four 
thousand dollars a year.” 


VAN FAILS IGNOMINIOUSLY. 


Ill 


CHAPTER VII. 

VAN FAILS IGNOMINIOUSLY. 

“ My life is cold and dark and dreary ; 

It rains, and the wind is never weary ; ^ 

My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, 
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, 
And the days are dark and dreary.” 

Longfellow. 

That one of the “Milbury maids” should be so 
far from her mother and sisters, in so magnificent 
a domicile, and burdened with so great a respon- 
sibility, was surely of the unexpected things that 
are aways happening. If the neighbors had 
been consulted, no doubt they would have con- 
sidered Van the one of the sisters best suited for 
such an experience, she being generally looked 
upon as the leader of the maids. Van’s own 
opinion of her fitness was doomed to suffer 
change. 

When the red gown and the white apron 
had been donned Dr. Morton took Van to her 
patient. 

“ Here is your new companion, dear Nelly,” 
he said in his particularly soft, persuasive voice. 
“ I have been telling her how happy she will be 
with one so kind and gentle as you are.” 

Miss Ames, pallid as one dead, and dressed 


II2 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


in the deepest black, was lying back in a large 
chair, her hands clasped above her head. Every- 
thing about her, from the small white hands to 
the small slippered feet, indicated luxury, fastidi- 
ousness, and weakness. She did not raise her 
eyes as the doctor spoke, but in a plaintive voice 
with a ‘note of fretfulness in it said, “Happy 
with one so wretched as I am ! O doctor !” 

“Come, come, she will help to make you 
happy,” said the doctor in the wheedling tones 
one uses to a petted child. “ A change of at- 
tendants will help you. I have brought the best 
I could find.” 

“ Doctor, if instead you could have brought 
me death ! I sit here and fancy death, not a 
grim spectre, but a white and gentle angel, to 
lead me to my father.” 

“ By-and-by, by-and-by, many years from 
now,” said the doctor. “ Come, wont you take 
a look at Miss Milbury ?” 

Miss Ames lifted a pair of sad eyes, heavy 
with weeping. 

“ There, now,” said the doctor aside to Van, 
“ I ’ll leave you. Cheer her up ; tell her some- 
thing new — amuse her, be witty ;” and away 
he went, leaving Van standing before Miss 
Ames, and struck particularly dumb. Nothing 
so kills the capacity for being amusing as to be 
ordered to exercise it. 


VAN FAILS IGNOMINIOUSLY. II3 

The silence lasted some five intolerable min- 
utes. Van Milbury had evidently not the faculty 
of adaptation. 

“ Why do n’t you talk ?” said Miss Ames quer- 
ulously. '‘Dr. Morton told you to talk, didn’t 
he ?” 

“ What do you wish me to talk about, Miss 
Ames ?” 

“ Do n’t say Miss Ames ! I have been called 
Nelly — oh so gently — and no one calls me Nelly 
now, unless I make them. Oh I have lost so 
much ! Do you know how unhappy I am ! Did 
you ever lose any one you loved ?” 

“ I lost my father when I was quite a little 
girl,” replied Van. 

“ Ah ! you were too young to feel it.” 

“And last summer a dear good uncle, just 
like a father.” 

“Yes? But then uncles are not fathers.” 

“And my home and all the money we had.” 

“I don’t think I should mind having lost 
such things as that. Have you any one left to 
care for you ?” 

“ A darling mother and two sisters,” said Van. 

“ Oh you are fortunate ! Every one is better 
off than I am !” 

“ But have you not sisters and brothers ?” 

“They are older than I am. They don’t 
care for me the most of any one in the world. 

‘ 8 


Adam’s Daughters. 


1 14 ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 

My brother Ben and my father did. They lived 
for me and petted me. I was everything to 
them. I don’t see why my father could not 
have lived !” 

“If you had never lost him, some time he 
must have had the grief of losing you. Perhaps 
he had already borne many sorrows, and God 
thought it well to spare him that. If you think 
he is happy now in heaven, all the joy is his 
and all the sorrow is yours. Perhaps we ought 
to be willing to bear our share of this kind of 
sorrow rather than wish our loved ones away 
from their glory and joy.” 

Miss Ames had never heard of being willing 
to suffer rather that to have others suffer. It 
was incredible doctrine ! 

“ My father was stronger and braver than I. 
He could have endured it better than I. I 
think no one would feel losses as I do. I am so 
sensitive. I live in my affections. I have always 
had too much sensibility. When I was a child I 
loved my dolls so that I cried for hours if one 
was broken. I was sick in bed for a week, once, 
when my canary died.” 

“ My mother never would allow us to give 
way to our feelings like that,” said Van. “ She 
said we had no right to trouble those around us 
by giving way wildly to sorrow. W e were taught 
that trouble was meant to give us training in 


VAN FAILS IGNOMINIOUSLY. 1 15 

courage and patience, for we could not expect 
to go through this world without meeting both.” 

“ How hard-hearted she must have been !” 
sighed Miss Ames. 

“ Oh ! she is the kindest, gentlest mother in 
the world.” 

“ My mother died when I was a baby. My 
father was not hard like that. You must have 
been very unhappy at home.” 

Unhappy! We were the three happiest 
girls alive ! Our home at Poplar Rise was so 
comfortable, and we were always busy about 
something, and we used to go up in the big garret 
and hold conclaves and make speeches to each 
other. When we wanted anything we used 
to make speeches to Uncle Aaron or mother, 
and when things did not suit us we never 
went farther than to sit in a row and sing, 
one of us, 'The Three Maries;’ another, 'Lor- 
raine, Lorree,’ and the other, ' The Three Fish- 
ers,’ and Hannah would say, ' Do, Mis’ Milbury, 
give them girls what they want. There they 
are singing them doleful ditties again !’ ” Here 
Van laughed out at the recollection, and Miss 
Ames started. The flood of Van’s memories 
had been set loose, and she told of going to the 
district school and building playhouses of broken 
china, stones, and acorns ; of visitors who came 
to pull candy and pop corn ; of husking frolics 


Il6 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

in the field, and rides on loads of hay, of finding 
Hannah ill, and having to rise betimes and 
do all the work with the help of Myra and Ted- 
die ; of having breakfast in the winter by lamp- 
light— 

“ Oh how unhappy you must have been !” 
moaned Miss Ames. “ But then as you never 
had a very good time, you had less to lose and 
do not feel so wretchedly unhappy as I do. And 
then you are not so sensitive. My father and 
brother waited on me always. They would give 
up anything for me. If I only said I liked a 
thing I got it. They would stay from business 
or anything to read to me or sing to me. Oh I 
have lost so much, I hate to live.” 

“ I think that was a very bad way to be 
brought up,” said Van frankly. We should all 
learn to think of others and make some sacri- 
fices. To do service and consider the good of 
others before our own seems to me the chief 
part of religion.” 

Van after a few days found that waiting on 
Miss Ames was no sinecure. She “ could not 
bear servants near her.” Van therefore must 
bring her nearly all her meals and coax her to 
eat them. She wanted her long thick hair brush- 
ed by the hour, and meanwhile wept over how her 
father had admired it and how proud he had 
been of her. For hours she would insist on the 


VAN FAILS IGNOMINIOUSLY. II7 

room being nearly dark. “ She hated .sunshine 
since her father died.” A true hothouse plant 
in her fashion of life, she kept the rooms at a 
heat which suffocated Van. When they rode 
out the closed carriage must have all the win- 
dows up and hot bricks piled on the floor so 
that the air was as warm as the house. If they 
passed a graveyard Miss Ames nearly wept her- 
self into hysterics : evergreen trees of any kind 
sent her into floods of tears. 

Van considered Miss Ames shamefully selfish 
and extremely foolish. She thought her bringing 
up had been an outrage on common sense, and in 
point of fact Van soon had very little sympathy 
or charity for her patient. She would despair in 
her efforts to entertain her since none succeeded. 

She failed to consider that Miss Ames’ grief 
was as overwhelming as if it had had a more rea- 
sonable foundation. She felt angry and scornful 
because Miss Ames had so little of unselfishness 
and of common sense. Teddie, the embodiment 
of Biblical charity, would have pitied Miss Ames 
for her very faults. This bruised reed would have 
aroused in her a divine sympathy. Poor Van, on 
the other hand, needed yet the tutelage of suffer- 
ing before she could exercise a due compassion. 
It is only in sorrow’s garden we can gather the 
herb called sympathy, and that not merely from 
sorrow but from sanctified sorrow. 


Il8 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

“ Do n’t sew,” Miss Ames would moan ; “ the 
steady motion of your hand drives me wild.” 
If Van picked up one of the numerous pieces of 
fancy-work whereby Dr. Morton tried to tempt 
his patient to amuse herself, the cry would soon 
be, “ Do put that out of sight. Do n’t em- 
broider ; it reminds me of how much interest 
my dear father and brother took in my embroi- 
dery and painting. How they praised all I did ! 
Oh why, why did I lose them !” 

Sometimes in desperation Van would begin 
to sing. If she burst into, “ Joy to the world, the 
Lord has come !” Oh stop ! stop ! Father ! fa- 
ther ! That was his favorite ! How he would 
stand and sing it in church ! Why did he die?” 

Was Van’s effort “Annie Laurie,” “Hush, 
Miss Milbury ! You kill me ! That was the first 
song I learned to sing to dear father when I was 
only eight. Oh how proud he was ! oh me !” 

Van found that the “ fine cultivation ” of 
which Dr. Morton spoke meant music, French, 
water-color, fancy-work, and a general acquaint- 
ance with the novels of the day. Van was 
given to groaning to herself that she wished 
Miss Ames had been taught arithmetic and 
history, or anything to educate her in common 
sense and reasonable thinking. If Van spoke 
sharply, or disputed, as indeed she often did. 
Miss Ames would fling herself face down weep- 


VAN FAILS IGNOMINIOUSLY. 1 19 

ing, “ Ah, my brother never spoke so ! Oh come 
back, father ! come back, brother ! Why did you 
die 

Too often Van would view the weeper with 
indignant eyes, thinking, Teddie is ten times 
as pretty as she is ; Myra is worth a thousand of 
her. Why must she have a half-million, and 
my poor dear girls be fighting for bread !’’ 

Then at night when her patient was asleep, 
but moaning in her sleep, and sighing, “ father,” 
“brother Ben,” Van would relent and say to 
herself, “Myra should have had this place, 
she is so much more considerate than I am. 
Teddie would have done far better here, Teddie 
is so much more tender than I am. Teddie has 
such true gospel spirit. She would have tried to 
do real good.” 

Then Van would make resolutions to aim at 
doing real good next day. She meant well, but 
perhaps her methods were wrong. Perhaps no 
methods would have succeeded. Thus : 

“ Dear Nelly, do not allow yourself to cry 
so much. It may make you blind. Think how 
terrible that would be.” 

“ Nothing is more terrible than what I have. 
I do n’t care if I am blind. I see no one that 
loves me or needs me. I have to cry. I can’t 
help it.” 

Or, “ Dear Nelly, if you allow yourself to 


120 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


brood SO, you may lose your mind ; think of that ; 
it is your duty to be more cheerful.” 

“I do n’t allow myself to brood. I am so 
sensitive I cannot help it. I do n’t care if I do 
lose my mind. I may then forget how sad I 
am. How can you ask me to be cheerful, with 
Ben and father dead ?” 

“ It seems to me that to encourage grief as 
you do is to quarrel with God. God knew what 
he did. What God does is well done. Are you 
not a Christian ?” 

“ A Christian ? Why, of course. I ’ve been a 
church member since I was ten. My father was 
so pleased when — oh dear, I want my father !” 

“ Then as a Christian why do you not think 
that you should take Christ for an example, 
who bore all sorrows and sufferings patiently ?” 

“ But you know he was God. That is differ- 
ent.” 

“ But he was also man, with man’s capacity 
for suffering.” 

“ It is not the same at all. I cannot expect 
to be like that, and I do not believe that any 
real, just human person ever suffered as I have.” 

But some people have lost all their friends, 
their home, and their health. Suppose you were 
a poor sick pauper in a hospital ?” 

People of that sort are not so sensitive as I 
am, you know.” 


VAN FAILS IGNOMINIOUSLY. 


I2I 


I do n’t know that. But for others, do you 
not think the mother of Christ had as great 
sorrows as yours when she saw her son cruci- 
fied ? Was not that a heavy sorrow ?” 

“ But she was the holy mother whom all na- 
tions call blessed, and all the band of the apos- 
tles loved her and thought for her. I am alone.” 

** But think of missionaries who have gone 
alone from friends and home into wild savage 
places.” 

“ They were willing. They chose. I was not 
willing to give up my father.” 

Perhaps that is the trouble, that you are 
unwilling for God’s will to be done, and are un- 
happy because you fight against God.” 

Miss Ames took refuge in tears, and Van in 
proud silence. 

At another time when Miss Ames was de- 
claring herself the most wretched and unfortu- 
nate of the human race, Van asked her if she 
remembered the cases of the martyrs. 

“ I do n’t know anything about the martyrs,” 
said Miss'Ames, “ except that they were people 
who chose to be burned rather than believe what 
they wouldn’t believe. Father never allowed 
me to read or hear sad things; he thought it 
would hurt me, I am so sensitive.” 

“ I think he prepared sorrow for you by over 
care,” said Van. 


122 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“I do n’t believe any martyrs suffered as 
much as I do. They must all have had some- 
thing to keep them up,” replied Miss Ames. 

“ They had faith and courageous spirits. 
You can have both if you will.” 

“Tell me about them,” said Miss Ames, 
flinging herself on the couch. “ I have cried till 
I have no more power to cry.” 

Van was not particularly well posted in 
martyrology, but in the dear old garret had 
been one or two books on that theme. She told 
of fair Margaret with the Solway’s tide rising 
over her innocent lips, of good Lord Cobham, 
hung to slowly roast in chains, of three young 
children burned at Smith field, of Ridley and 
Latimer whose death-pyre lit Oxford in 1555. 
As she grew eloquent about Anne Askew on the 
rack, and John Rogers marching to the stake. 
Miss Ames went into a paroxysm of sobs and 
tears and cries. Van ceased narrating and tried 
to calm her patient. She could not control her ; 
the poor girl’s frail frame worked convulsively, 
and Van, terribly frightened, rang for the doc- 
tor. 

“ What in the world brought this on ?” asked 
Dr. Morton, after he had quieted his patient 
with a hypodermic injection. 

“She — told — me — such dreadful things — ” 
gasped Miss Ames. 


VAN FAILS IGNOMINIOUSLY. 


123 

“ I only told her what she asked me to, for a 
change,” said Van. 

“About — people — being — women and chil- 
dren — burned and tortured and drowned. I 
never knew the world was so cruel and bad and 
dreadful ! Oh, I can’t live ! I wont live ! I 
want to die !” 

“I should think,” said Dr. Morton, taking 
Van aside when Miss Ames was asleep, “that 
you would know better than to tell her such 
things. Patients should not have their morbid 
desires indulged. She does not know what is 
good for her. Forget whatever is sad or dull 
and be funny.” * 

“ I do n’t feel as if I ever knew or heard or 
said a funny thing in my life,” said Van despair- 
ingly. Up in that famous garret she could keep 
her sisters laughing by the half-hour, but then 
they were cheerful people. 

Again when Miss Ames was bewailing that she 
had nothing to live for. Van tried a new method. 

“ Our minister’s wife says that Christians 
have always something to live for as long as 
they can serve God. Christ lived to do good, 
and when all else is lost to us, we can still live 
to imitate Christ and do good to men. If health 
fails us and nothing remains but to suffer, then 
we can glorify God in the fires, and suffer pa- 
tiently, uncomplainingly.” 


124 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ But I can’t do any of those strong-minded 
things ; I am not made that way,” wailed Miss 
Ames. “ I can only break my heart ; I always 
knew that I was born to die of a broken 
heart.” 

“ Only think,” urged Van desperately, “ of 
the good you might do with all your money. 
Think how many sick poor people there are 
who have not the comforts of life : think of the 
poor little orphans, of the poor women making 
shirts at a dollar a dozen and very nearly starv- 
ing to death at their machines. Why, you 
might go to them like an angel of help! You 
could go about doing good as Christ did ! Oh 
why wont you rise up and do good?”' 

“ I can’t — I never could. I should be fright- 
ened to death by those people. I am so frail. 
I cannot endure such places where there is so 
much dirt. The rude noises alarm me and the 
smells make me sick. My father never let me 
see horrible sights to hurt my feelings. Besides 
those people do n’t care for me, and I do n’t care 
for them. I want those that love me.” 

“ Christ came to those who did not love him. 
Do you not think that to a holy soul like his 
this earth with its sin was a continual pain ? 
He had lived, not merely in a home like yours, 
but in heaven ; he left his eternal Father and 
came to live in the vile, sickening sights of earth 


VAN FAILS IGNOMINIOUSLY. 1 25 

to do good. I should think if you were half a 
Christian you would be glad to use your money 
for him. The trouble with you, Miss Ames, is 
you are selfish. All your life has been selfish ; 
you have been brought up to think first and 
only of yourself. Your sorrow is selfish, and 
being selfish it is wicked.” 

Poor Miss Ames had never been so roundly 
spoken to. She cried, “You are scolding me! 
I cannot bear it! My father never allowed a 
cross word to be said to me ! Oh, you cruel girl ! 
Oh where is my father to defend and comfort 
me. Oh go away from me ! I am afraid of you. 
Go ! go ! go !” and wringing her hands, tearing 
her hair, and falling back on the bed, she went 
into a violent fit of hysterics. Van, penitent, 
alarmed, having never seen an attack of the kind, 
rang for the doctor. When Miss Ames could 
speak at all it was to moan, “ She scolded me.” 

That evening Dr. Morton sent for Van. 

“ Miss Milbury, I find you quite unsuited to 
this position. You do not know how to humor 
our patient or how to amuse her. Your trial 
month is about ended. I have telegraphed for 
another attendant. I am sorry you have failed, 
but I must consider only my patient.” He 
handed her sixteen dollars. “ The first train in 
the morning the carriage will be at the door for 
you,” he murmured. 


26 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ I suppose I am all wrong,” said Van, “but 
the whole trouble with Miss Ames seems to be 
lack of common sense.” 

The doctor smiled gently. 

“That lies at the root of half of human 
troubles. But we must take people as we find 
them. Constitution, heredity, very foolish rear- 
ing, no doubt, no doubt. Good-by.” 

When Van appeared again before Miss 
Ames, who had slept and was revived, “ What 
have you been crying about?” asked Miss Ames. 

Van flushed. “ I am going to leave you to- 
morrow morning.” 

“ Oh ! And you are really sorry for that — to 
leave me ?” 

“ No,” said Van frankly. “ I see I do n’t un- 
derstand you, and I am glad to go. But what I 
am crying about is that I came here to get 
money to pay a debt — a hundred and twenty 
dollars — and — after this month — I shall have 
just four dollars when I get home. Foolish to 
cry for that, am I not ?” 

“Crying about money! Such a little bit! 
Why you poor dear, let me write a check. I 
have plenty ! Here, I ’ll make it five hundred, 
will that do ? Where is my check-book ?” 

“Stop!” said Van proudly, “I cannot take a 
penny from you. We Milburys never take 
charity. We will work it out somehow. No, 


VAN FAILS IGNOMINIOUSLY. 12/ 

you need not say a word about it. You .see 
that there are various kinds of trouble in this 
world. Mine is but one. I ’ll bear it some- 
how.” 

“ I really like you,” said Miss Ames wistfully. 
“ I wish you were not going.” 


128 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

MYRA GOES TO SEEK HER FORTUNE. 

Thy God hath not denied thee all 
While he permits thee grace to call. 

Call to thy God for grace to keep 
Thy vows, and if thou break them, weep. 

— G. HERBERT. 

Homeward went Van Milbury, full of shame 
and remorse over her failure. Had she not 
shown some of the lack of common sense which 
she had criticised in Miss Ames ? As the cars 
rushed along Van shut her eyes from the win- 
try landscape and passed the four weeks of her 
absence from home in review ; and now that the 
excitement of it all was over, she weighed her- 
self in mental balances and found herself want- 
ing. There was no one at the station to meet 
her ; no one knew that she was coming. Snow 
still covered the earth, but the roads were better 
beaten than when she left, and with her little 
bag in hand she trudged towards the brown 
house. 

It was Saturday afternoon. Teddie was at 
home. Mamma Milbury was at home also for a 
few days, and they had just been talking of 
Van, while Myra fried such doughnuts as Van 


MYRA GOES TO SEEK HER FORTUNE. 1 29 

most affected. And lo, coming into the gate 
was Van, with a crestfallen, defeated look about 
her which none of them had ever seen in the 
valiant Van before. 

Out dashed the sisters. “Van, you blessing ! 
What good luck sent you home ? Oh we were 
just wishing for you. You have come to your 
senses and found that, ‘ be it never so homely, 
there ’s no place like home.’ Mamma, here is 
our prodigal. She has found Dr. Morton’s tur- 
keys and lobster-salad but husks, and has come 
home to eat my doughnuts ! Sit down. Van, and 
have a hot doughnut, just as you like it. Why, 
girj, you look perished with cold.” Thus the 
younger two in chorus, pushing Van into her 
mother’s arms, and then into a chair near the 
stove ; and Teddie took off her sister’s coat, hat, 
gloves, and overshoes, and Myra bestowed fried 
cakes upon her ; while mamma Milbury sat near 
at hand smiling at her, and saying how good it 
was to see her three maids together again. 
Thus Van was made much of because these 
women instinctively recognized that the world 
had in some fashion gone hardly with her. 

Van presently took a little courage from the 
heat, the welcome, the doughnuts, and the gen- 
eral home feeling. She arrived at a point where 
she could speak without crying. She must tell 
her story and she burst forth, 

9 


Adam's Daughters. 


130 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ Myra, you were quite right ! I was not fit 
for the place at all ; 1 have so little tact, so little 
patience, so little sympathy and considerateness. 
You would have done much better ; you know 
how to make allowances for people. Teddie 
would have done much better ; Teddie is so lov- 
ing and so gospel-like. But oh I made such a 
mess of it!” And then followed a description 
of Dr. Morton’s Establishment for Nervous 
and Morbid Patients, of Nellie Ames and her 
history and ways, and Van’s methods with 
her. 

“ Poor unfortunate girl,” said Mrs Milbury, 
“ what a pity she has not been more reasonably 
raised !” 

“We are not the worst off people in the world 
it seems,” said Myra. “ What good does all her 
money do her ?” 

“The fact is,” said Van, “I really am afraid 
I was mean enough to be privately contrasting 
her money and our poverty, and thinking how 
much more good we could do with the fortune 
than she does. I would n’t wonder if I should 
have been more patient with a poor girl in such 
a state.” 

“A poor girl does n’t get in that state,” said 
Myra. “She has no time. \ She has affairs of 
bread and butter and boots to attend to. She 
has not been so accustomed to sleep on rose- 


MYRA GOES TO SEEK HER FORTUNE. 131 

leaves that she is frantic if even the rose-leaves 
are crumpled. I think your patience must have 
been taxed.” 

“ I sent Mrs. Lowell her eight dollars a 
week ago,” said Van, “ and here I am, with just 
four dollars for a month’s work.” 

“ Never mind, dear,” said Myra, “ you did 
the best you could.” 

“ I wonder if Mrs. Gore wants any more pil- 
low shams made ?” said Van meditatively. 

‘‘Don’t think of that now,” said Teddie. 
“ This is Saturday evening. We cannot do any 
more work until Monday morning. Let us have 
a truce of God until then from outside worries, 
and let the peace of the Sabbath fall on us. Let 
us just forget the world as it forgets us, and be 
ourselves for ourselves, and enjoy having mam- 
my and Van here with us. Myra, how lonely 
we were here last Saturday evening, you and I 
alone here, and it stormed so !” 

Monday morning, “ The truce is over,” said 
Myra as Teddie wrapped herself up to encounter 
a storm as she went to her pupils. “ Now we 
must think ‘ what we shall eat and what we shall 
drink and wherewithal we shall be clothed,’ or 
where the money for all this eating and drink- 
ing and clothing shall come from, which amounts 
to the same thing.” 

“Well, don’t worry over it,” said Teddie. 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


132 

“ Do n’t forget that our Father knoweth that we 
have need for all these things ; and as the old 
Scotchman said, ‘ It is for His credit to keep his 
children decent.’ ” 

Teddie was hardly gone before a passing 
acquaintance handed in a letter that had come 
with the morning’s mail. It was from Dr. Mor- 
ton. Finding Miss Milbury gone, Nelly Ames 
had refused her breakfast and dinner, refused 
to be comforted, and blamed herself for Miss 
Milbury’s failure to please. She was greatly 
disturbed by what she had learned of Miss Mil- 
bury’s financial condition, and insisted that Dr. 
Morton should contrive some way for her to 
make Miss Milbury a present. As Dr. Morton 
thought that not feasible, she threatened hys- 
terics unless a new situation should be provided 
for poor Miss Milbury. 

“ You see,” wrote the doctor, “ in spite of her 
morbidness. Miss Ames is one of the kindest 
creatures in the world. I have only calmed her 
by letting her know that you shall suffer no loss 
by leaving us. I telegraphed to my friend the 

superintendent of the Insane Asylum at , 

and asked if he had a vacancy as attendant for 
you. He telegraphed that he had, and for you 
to be there Tuesday. The salary will be eighteen 
dollars a month, with your board provided. I 
am sure you can fill the position admirably.” 


MYRA GOES TO SEEK HER FORTUNE. 1 33 

“I can never do it, I know I never can,” said 
Van. “ I shall make some dreadful mistake at 
once. You go, Myra. You have twice my sense. 
You can just tell the superintendent that I could 
not come and sent you. He will like you as 
soon as he looks at you. There is something 
stanch and reliable in your very expression. 
Do go for me. Come now, I have hardly worn 
the good shoes any, and have only used one pair 
of the gloves. Miss Ames hated sounds so that 
I had to wear wool slippers. I stole about so 
soundless that I kept fancying that I was the 
ghost of myself. I will shorten the red gown a 
couple of inches and you can have that ; you can 
take Teddie’s aprons. There, your outfit is pro- 
vided. I ’ll pack your trunk. Say you 11 go. 
One of us must make some money, and you see 
how I feel.” 

Myra felt as if she could not go : to leave her 
mother for an indefinite time seemed a fate that 
she could not face. But she noticed how ner- 
vous and pale Van looked from her month of 
care and close confinement ; perhaps she was 
unfit for a new task. Should she go ? She ques- 
tioned her mother with her eyes. 

“ I hate to have any of you go away alone,” 
said mamma. 

Suddenly Myra thought, “ Suppose mamma 
should feel compelled to stop nursing for a 


134 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


while, and there should be no more money in 
the house ! How much harder it would be for 
the poor mother !” She put on an air of courage. 

“ I believe I ’ll go. It is well for all young 
birds to fly from the nest a little, is n’t it, mam- 
my ? I feel a desire for adventures rising within 
my soul. You are right. Van ; it is my turn. 
But you must work hard to get me ready.” 

Thus it was when Teddie was brought home 
that evening by Cousin Joe that she found an- 
other of her sisters going forth to seek her for- 
tune. The little trunk that had come home 
Saturday night was packed ready to set out on 
Tuesday morning ; Van, with a very red face, 
was ironing Myra’s clothes ; Myra was doing the 
last few stitches of mending ; and mamma was 
putting up a little box of sewing materials for 
Myra to take away with her. 

‘‘ Come home in a month, dear, and then I ’ll 
take my turn,” said Teddie, resolved to keep up 
the family heart. “ The Milbury maids must 
each make a little journey into the world to seek 
adventures, as the famous knights of old.” 

In her heart she wondered how Myra could 
endure the idea of going among crazy people. 
To Teddie it seemed a frightful position. Mean- 
time Myra was sedulously keeping it to herself 
that she was fairly shivering with fear every 
time that she faced the situation. 


MYRA GOES TO SEEK HER FORTUNE. 1 35 

And SO next day, by that fatal early train, 
another Milbury maid was launched upon the 
world. Returning- from the station where she 
had been to see her sister off. Van considered 
that it would be only kind to write to Miss Ames 
and thank her for her interest. She felt too as 
if she owed Miss Ames an apology for not hav- 
ing had more patience. After she began the 
letter she concluded that she must explain that 
Myra had gone among the lunatics in her place. 

Myra is so much kinder and more considerate 
than I am, that she will do more good. I was 
sure if I went I should be constantly making 
mistakes, as I was with you ; and as one of us 
must make some money to ‘ keep the pot boil- 
ing,’ why she was very glad to have the oppor- 
tunity to go.” 

With all her heart she longed to say some- 
thing that might be helpful to poor Nelly. But 
whenever she had tried she had made a mis- 
take and had done more harm than good. She 
folded her letter and unfolded it. Finally she 
wrote — “ And He, bearing his cross, went forth.” 
“ The noble army of the martyrs praise thee.” 

This little effort to do good was all that she 
could make. She was not eloquent in letter 
writing nor wise in counsel, and she and Nelly 
Ames seemed to be so far apart that she could 
not get near her in helpfulness. She had in her 


136 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

hand but those two little seeds of good words. 
She dropped those and went her way, knowing 
not which should prosper, this or that, or wheth- 
er they should both alike be good. 

After the letter was sent away Mr. Lowell 
came in. Van told him the story of her failure 
as companion for Nelly Ames. 

“ You can see she was really kind-hearted, she 
felt so sorry for me when I came away. I feel as 
if I ought to have been able to do her some 
good. I felt so to-day when I was writing to her. 
And yet all I could send her was two forlorn 
little lonesome sentences at the end of my 
letter.” 

“Well if that was all you could do, and all 
the Lord had given you for her, it was all you 
were responsible for. It is not by small or by 
great, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts. 
Did you ever think. Van, what has been wrought 
by little things that were in some one’s hand ? 
The instrument at hand is that which we are 
responsible for using. Samson found at hand a 
jaw-bone, and he smote the Philistines with a 
great slaughter. Moses had a rod, and with it 
he wrought the prodigies that freed Israel, and 
led them through the desert. Miriam had only 
a tinkling timbrel, but with it she led forth in 
joyful worship the Hebrew women. Ehud had 
a trumpet, which he blew so loudly on the moun- 


MYRA GOES TO SEEK HER FORTUNE. 1 37 

tains of Ephraim that his people ‘ slew of Moab 
at that time ten thousand lusty men of valor.’ 
Gideon’s host had his lamps and pitchers, but 
with them they cast off the yoke of Midian. Jael 
had a tent-pin ; it served her for slaying Sisera, 
the tyrant of the people. Rahab had a scarlet 
thread ; with its use she purchased the lives of 
all her father’s house. David had a sling and 
smooth stones of the brook ; with them he slew 
Goliath. Shamgar had only an ox-goad, but 
with it he delivered Israel. A little lad had five 
loaves and two small fishes, but given to Christ 
they fed the multitude. Mary had only a box of 
ointment, but broken over the head of Christ its 
perfume has filled the world for two thousand 
years. Peter of silver and gold had none, but he 
had a word of power in Christ’s name — ‘ Rise up 
and walk.’ ‘Not by might nor by power, but 
by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.’ I finish. 
Van, where I began.” 

“ It was a very good beginning, and a very 
good ending,” said Van. “ Such thoughts would 
be so strengthening if we could only take them 
along with us. We should be likely to do more 
good.” 

“We shall never know how much good we 
do until the day when all work is reckoned up,” 
said Mr. Lowell. “ Perhaps then you may find 
that some of your brusque talk or the little 


138 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

words that ended your letter have helped Miss 
Ames.” 

“ I wonder how much good Myra will do in 
the insane asylum,” said Van to Teddie as they 
went to bed that night, and thought of the other 
Milbury maid spending the night in the asy- 
lum. 

Uncle Daniel had been at the brown house 
that evening, and had given his views as deci- 
dedly against “Adam’s daughters going off from 
home.” “ I did n’t take to the notion when Mr. 
Summers brought it up,” he said, “but Van 
seemed so set on it ; and this notion of being an 
attendant in an asylum is still worse. For my 
part, I do n’t like to see women rambling off that 
way. No doubt it is all right for them to do 
something; but so far from home don’t strike 
me as just the right thing.” 

“But, uncle,” said Teddie, “since poor un- 
happy women do go insane, and as most of them 
have to be taken care of in asylums when they 
are insane, you see there must be women for at- 
tendants to take care of them and try to help 
them ; and when a good kind girl like Myra will 
do it, why so much the better for the poor pa- 
tients. We must not be selfish.” 

“ Perhaps so ; perhaps so,” said Uncle Daniel, 
shaking his head, “but I don’t like to see 
Adam’s daughters left in this case. And Sara 


MYRA GOES TO SEEK HER FORTUNE. 1 39 

Ann do n’t think any better of it than I do. I 
wish you girls had the farm. But what is done 
is done.” 

Meanwhile Myra, after a number of hours in 
the cars, came to a straggling village lying on a 
level and dominated by a vast pile of masonry 
stretched along a low hill. Handsome grounds 
surrounded it on every side ; the setting sun cast 
the shadows of the evergreens on the snow, and 
flamed redly against the multitudinous windows, 
until the distant building seemed on fire. 

A gayly painted omnibus marked Asylum 
stood at the station, and in it Myra took her 
place. A very pale young woman accompanied 
by a sad-faced man got in next ; then two men 
holding between them a strong man whose 
hands and feet were tied, and who ducked his 
head from side to side in an effort to bite his 
keepers. Failing in this, he took a mouthful 
out of his coat or shirt bosom, wherever he could 
fix his teeth. A tall woman in widow’s weeds 
took her place, and the load of human sorrow 
was complete. 

“Henry,” said the pale woman, “why don’t 
you take me home? The children want their 
supper, Henry, and I ought to be there to get it. 
I ’m afraid of that man, Henry ; I ’m afraid he 
will find the children and hurt them. There is 
a nice bed for us all down there in the pond.” 


140 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

The man turned to Myra, who sat next him. 
“Three of them,” he whispered, “three such 
pretty children, all died in one week of scarlet- 
fever. She lost her mind from it. I wanted to 
keep her at home, but she tries to drown herself, 
and our doctor said perhaps here at the asylum 
they could cure her.” 

“ Henry,” urged the woman, “ why do n’t you 
let me get the poor children their supper ?” 

As for Myra, her sympathetic heart was full 
of pain for the wretched husband and wife ; she 
was in mortal terror also of the lunatic opposite 
her, who fixed his red eyes on her, and shaking 
his head, which looked as if no comb had ever 
touched the shock of coarse hair, informed her 
roundly that “ he ’d as soon eat her as wink.” 

“ Come and sit by me if you are afraid,” said 
the woman in black ; “ I am more used than you 
to these things. The men will not let him get 
away. Are you going to the asylum ?” 

“As an assistant,” said Myra, trembling as 
she changed her seat, while the maniac bit at 
her gown as she passed him. 

“You look as if you would be kind to the 
poor creatures,” said the widow. “ Do n’t be 
afraid ; they shut up wild ones like that. I have 
a poor sister who has been a patient here for six 
years. I come to see her once in three months. 
She is very mischievous, poor creature.” 


MYRA GOES TO SEEK HER FORTUNE. 141 

“ Do they never get well ?” asked Myra. 

“ Oh yes, a number go out cured every year. 
The first year there is great hope of them; 
many are cured the second year ; after that the 
chances are less and less. Epileptic ones and 
rum maniacs are pretty hopeless cases.” 

They drove through the great arched gate- 
way. Myra saw that all the windows were 
barred, and behind the bars gibbering faces 
leered at those that passed; fists were shaken; 
sometimes from an open window came a loud 
cry to be “saved,” to be “taken away from 
there.” A chill horror fell over Myra. This 
place was a prison ; the prisoners were victims 
of misfortune. Behind the same bars hide 
crime and misfortune, as crime and folly reap 
the same fields. 

The omnibus stopped. “ Henry ” led his 
plaintive wife to the office. Three or four 
strong men came to secure and carry away the 
biting madman. Loud laughter, wild cries rang 
out now and then. A very elegantly dressed 
young woman, with a white-aproned attendant 
close behind her, swept along the hall with a 
grand, empress-like air, her silken skirt trailing 
after her. She turned towards Myra with a 
swift action and spit at her. As Myra drew 
back the attendant caught the girl’s hand and 
said, “ Do n’t do that again !” 


142 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


The widow had passed on ; the girl gathered 
up her trailing skirt, ran forward, and with a 
sudden motion jerked the long crape veil, and 
shrieked with laughter as the widow’s hat fell 
off. 

“This is a fearful place,” said the widow to 
Myra, “ but I do not know how we could get on 
without it. Six hundred patients here that 
could not be cared for anywhere else. Oh when 
I am here I can hardly understand that text, 
‘ The goodness of God endureth continually.’ 
And then I consider how very much better these 
poor lunatics are treated than they were years 
ago, and I remember how at the feet of our 
Lord lunatics sat down clothed and in their 
right mind. As you are coming here to be an 
attendant, let me tell you, miss, that your word 
should be, ‘ There is balm in Gilead, and there 
is a Physician there,’ and you ’ll find the name 
and words and thoughts of the dear Lord will 
go farther than aught else to quiet these poor 
torn minds and to stay and balance your own 
mind while you are working here among them.” 


V 


MYRA HAS VARIOUS EXPERIENCES. 143 


CHAPTER IX. 

MYRA HAS VARIOUS EXPERIENCES. 

“ In the deep heart of man care builds her nest ; 

O’er secret woes she broodeth there.” faust. 

The clerk of the asylum took Myra up two 
flights of stairs to a long, wide hall, carpeted and 
furnished, from which small rooms opened on 
either side. One room, larger than the others, 
was arranged as a dining-room, and a table was 
ready spread for tea. Opposite this room was 
another, with a bookcase, a parlor organ, a stand 
of flowers in the bay-window. Had it not been 
for the wild noises and curious antics and dark, 
despairing faces of the dozen or fifteen women, 
the sight of the iron bars at all the windows, the 
noise of the key in the lock at each opening of 
the door, Myra might have thought it a not un- 
pleasant place. 

“ Miss Munson, here is the new attendant,” 
said the clerk. “ Miss Munson has been here 
three years; she can tell you all you need to 
know and he went away, Miss Munson care- 
fully unlocking and locking the door. 

“ Your room will be at this end of the corri- 
dor,” said Miss Munson, taking Myra to a small. 


144 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


neat room, where her trunk was presently 
brought. “You had better settle yourself at 
^ .. once; tea will be ready in an hour.” 

V Myra began to arrange her hair and her be- 
i^ongings. As she did so the door was flung 
'|pen two or three times and inane faces looked 
ySin with a giggle, a hiss, or a twist of the 
tongue. 

“ Lock your door if you wish to be let alone,” 
said Miss Munson, coming by smiling. “ When 
one of us is in the corridor, the other can lock 
herself in for a little.” 

When Myra was ready to come out of her 
room she found the corridor lit by the electric 
light. One patient was racing up and down the 
corridor at the top of her speed ; one, a lovely 
young girl, lay on a lounge, her hands clasped 
over the white lace trimming of her pretty blue 
wrapper, a look of utter despair on her face, and 
sighing deeply; one patient was quietly reading ; 
another was trimming herself up with strips of 
paper and inquiring of her neighbors as to the 
general effect. The widow v:ho had come with 
Myra was holding the hand of a woman who sat 
by her on the sofa and whose restless black eyes 
rolled incessantly, as if in search of something. 
Alone and desolate stood the bereaved mother 
who had come in the omnibus. She kept re- 
peating, “Why do n’t the children come in ? I 


MYRA HAS VARIOUS EXPERIENCES. 145 

must give the children their supper and put 
them to bed.” 

“ Oh are you here ?” said the widow to Myra. 
“ I ’m glad of that. I like your looks. You will 
be kind to my poor Lizzie. Miss Munson,” r 
Lizzie broke away from her, “is she any be^t 
ter?” 

“ No,” said Miss Munson, “ worse, I think. 
She makes more trouble than any one else in 
the ward. But then she is never ugly ; she can 
be controlled tolerably well.” Then, as the run- 
ning woman dashed by her, she added, “ Oh how 
she tires me when she gets one of those spells at 
evening. 1 11 be glad when supper is over and 
I can put her in her room. Sad case, this Mrs. 
Ferrol.” 

The poor mother, Mrs. Ferrol, recognized 
Myra, and coming to her and taking her hand, 
said, “ Wont you call Henry for me ? I want 
him to take me away. I do n’t like this place ; 
the people act so queer, and I want to see the 
children. Is that girl on the sofa wanting her 
children?” 

“ Suppose you stay here until after tea or till 
to-morrow,” said Myra persuasively, “ and these 
people may act better, and you can find out what 
is the matter with the girl. Perhaps she would 
like to have you sit by her and tell her all about 
your children.” 


Adam’s Daughters. 


10 


146 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


She led Mrs. Ferrol to a hassock near the 
sighing girl. 

“ Ah,” said Miss Munson, “ you will make a 
good attendant. I see you have tact.” 

“ Does an attendant ever get used to it all ?” 
asked Myra. 

Some never do. They get so nervous that 
they cannot sleep and are threatened with ner- 
vous fever. Others get hard-hearted and impa- 
tient and tyrannical, and if it comes under any 
one’s notice they are sent away. Others hear of 
better positions and hurry off. Such a place as 
this is pretty hard, I can tell you. I have been 
here three years and I think I ought to be pro- 
moted pretty soon. If I am put in charge of a 
floor I shall get twenty-two dollars a month in- 
stead of eighteen.” 

Here the supper-bell tinkled, and some of the 
patients ran into the dining-room, others had to 
be persuaded to go. The sad girl refused to 
leave her sofa. Mrs. Ferrol took her place 
quietly, but looked with disgust at the tin plates 
and cups. 

“ I can’t eat off tiny' she said. “Why do you 
treat me so? I am not a beggar. Henry will 
not like this. Why am I here ? Young lady,” 
to Myra in a whisper, “ let me out of this place. 
I know of such a nice, quiet bed in the pond.” 

“ Lizzie,” said Miss Munson in a sudden sharp 


MYRA HAS VARIOUS EXPERIENCES. 147 

tone, “ if you throw that plate up to the ceiling 
you cannot have any tea.” 

Myra looked, and Lizzie, with her plate poised 
for a skilful throw, was hesitating whether to 
forego mischief or tea. 

“ Be good now, Lizzie ; I have come to visit 
you,” said the widow. 

“ Do n’t set me a bad example,” said Myra. 

Oh let us all throw our plates ! Come now, 
all ready !” cried Lizzie. 

No one responded to the invitation and Liz- 
zie ate her supper. 

After tea Miss Munson put each patient in 
her own particular room and locked each door. 
Some were perfectly silent and seemed to be 
undressing ; some raged and kicked the doors ; 
the running woman jumped for a while, but at 
last subsided. The widow was allowed to go in 
with Lizzie and sit with her until she fell asleep ; 
Miss Munson coaxed the sad girl off and re- 
mained with her, brushing her hair, patting her 
hands, rubbing her head until she too slept. 
She explained to Myra that this girl’s friends 
gave her a fee for rendering extra attention to 
her; also that the girl had lost her mind on 
account of a railroad disaster in which her pa- 
rents and sisters had perished. Myra was 
allowed to take Mrs. Ferrol to her room, unpack 
her trunk, and get her to bed. “ The children ! 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


148 

the children !” sobbed the poor creature contin- 
uously. 

'‘Yes, yes,” said Myra, “let us think that 
they are in bed in the next room. I will sing 
you and the children to sleep.” She began to 
sing softly, 

“ Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,” 
and repeated it again and again, until the tired 
mother’s plaints ended in unconsciousness. As 
the low, sweet notes and simple words stole over 
the corridor the tumultuous noises began to die 
away, and finally all was silence. 

The widow went away to the part of the 
building reserved for guests ; Miss Munson came 
from Miss Waters’ room. She tried all the 
doors to see if they were locked, then throwing 
her arms over her head she stretched herself 
with a deep sigh, as one casting off an intolera- 
ble burden. “ At last ! quiet at last !” she said. 

“ Is this the way all the time ?” asked Myra. 

“Yes, unless it is worse. They are pretty 
quiet to-day. The racket begins in the morning, 
and we are well off if it is not set up by some 
one in the night. If Miss Waters wont eat to- 
morrow morning we will have to make her. 
She has missed two meals now, and she is not 
strong.” y 

“ Wont she eat when she is hungry ?” asked 
Myra. 


MYRA HAS VARIOUS EXPERIENCES. 149 

“ No ; it is a favorite fad with them to starve 
themselves.” 

By good luck the patients slept well. The 
next morning not only Miss Waters but another 
patient had to be forced to eat. Miss Munson 
skilfully slipped an elastic jacket or bag over 
their heads, drawing it down over their arms, 
then fastening them in their chairs. She had 
Myra hold the cup of food while each patient 
had a certain number of spoonfuls of nourish- 
ment poured into her throat. 

“ When it comes to this,” said Miss Munson, 
“ we give them only what is needed, and that 
of the strongest kind of beef extract.” 

“ How do you know what is right ?” asked 
Myra. 

“ By the doctor’s orders. He comes in every 
day.” 

Does such feeding do them any good ?” 

“ Not as much as food willingly taken, of 
course ; but it keeps them alive. Crazy folks 
are not the only ones that fight against what is 
good for them, though.” 

The doctor made his rounds ; the patients 
were more or less worrisome. Miss Munson 
persuaded some of them to read and some to 
play games. The doctor’s wife came with ma- 
terials for fancy-work, and several of the women 
took interest in making really pretty articles. 


150 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

“ I think it a duty to try and keep them 
happy, if I can,” said Miss Munson. “ I am here 
to earn my living, it is true ; but the institution 
hired me not for my benefit, but for the benefit 
of the patients.” 

“ I should think any attendant would feel 
that God took particular notice of the treatment 
of such unfortunates,” said Myra. 

Half of them never think of such a thing,” 
said Miss Munson, “and they act atrociously 
when the doctor’s back is turned. If I am made 
overseer of a floor some of these attendants will 
have to walk straighter than they do.” 

Thus the days went on. Within the first 
week Myra went to her room, which she had 
inadvertently left unlocked — for it was hard for 
her to fall into the lock-and-key system — and lo, 
the troublesome Lizzie seated by her trunk, scis- 
sors in hand ! She had just cut up all Myra’s 
handkerchiefs and her two best white aprons, 
and was about to attack her underclothes, when 
Myra appeared. Myra cried out in dismay. 

“ Lizzie, I shall put you in a strait-jacket 
for this,” said Miss Munson ; “ you know better. 
But, Myra, you must lock your trunk and your 
door. If some of the women had got those large 
scissors we might have had a suicide.” 

“Not a handkerchief nor apron left!” said 
Myra, ready to weep. 


MYRA HAS VARIOUS EXPERIENCES. 151 

“ I am going into the city this afternoon,” 
said Miss Munson, “ and I will buy you some.” 

“ But — I have — no money,” said Myra, flush- 
ing. 

“ Never mind ; I ’ll lend you some.” 

Myra was ashamed to ask for the cheapest 
purchases; besides, she had no idea of city 
prices. 

Six handkerchiefs and four aprons — three 
dollars,” said Miss Munson when she returned 
at night. 

Mrs. Ferrol was Myra’s self-chosen, peculiar 
care. She felt much compassion for her and re- 
membered so well the unhappy face of “ Henry.” 
One day, being on an errand in the room of the 
wife of their corridor doctor, she saw a lovely 
colored picture of “Christ blessing little chil- 
dren,” and borrowed it. 

“ See,” she said to Mrs. Ferrol, “ I have found 
out where your children are, and I have brought 
you a picture of them. Do you see ?” 

“ So they are !” cried the poor creature. 

“ There is my baby Grace, with her yellow hair, 
leaning on that — that One’s breast. Just so she 
used to sit on Henry’s lap. And there is Carl, . 
and there is Ruth standing by His knees. Why 
did you not have them turn their faces more 
this way so I could see them better ?” 

“ They want to look at Him, you know. He 


152 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


loves them and they love him. See, they are 
happy. They are not cold or hungry or tired, 
as you think they are. They are not in the 
pond; they are in this Teacher’s school, and 
some day you will go and find them there.” 

What is he saying to them ?” asked the 
mother. 

“ He says, ‘ Suffer little children to come unto 
me and forbid them not, for of such is the king- 
dom of heaven.’ ” 

“Why, I think I taught Carl that once. 
What is His name?” 

“ His name is Christ,” said Myra, “ the lover 
of children.” 

Mrs. Ferrol carried the picture around with 
her, large as it was, and sat looking at it by the 
hour. 

“ See my children,” she said to the women 
as they passed her. “ See how pretty they are 
and how happy they look ! He takes good care 
of them. Does Henry know where they are ?” 

“Yes, he knows,” said Myra. “Keep it in 
mind that they are all right and want nothing.” 

“What more does He say to them?” she 
urged again. 

“‘I love them that love me, and they that 
seek me early shall find me.’ And again : ‘ All 
thy children shall be taught of God ; and great 
shall be the peace of thy children or, ' I say 


MYRA HAS VARIOUS EXPERIENCES. 1 53 

unto you that in heaven their ang-els do always 
behold the face of my Father which is in hea- 
ven.’ ” 

Mrs. Ferrol grew quiet, but also she grew 
weak. At the end of a fortnight she was carried 
to the hospital ward. 

‘'Brain fever,” said the doctor. “She may 
come out of it cured ; she may die.” 

But on her bed in the hospital she would not 
rest unless the picture was within reach of her 
hand ; and when, now and then, Myra could go 
and whisper to her “ what He was saying to the 
children,” she grew calmer. 

The day Mrs. Ferrol left the corridor Miss 
Munson was promoted, and her place was taken 
by a large, coarse girl who had been six months 
as an attendant in the asylum. Roughness char- 
acterized all her dealings with the patients. Her 
loud, harsh voice exasperated them ; her rude, 
unsympathetic ways stirred up antagonism. The 
only quiet time now was when it was the turn of 
those especial patients to be taken out to ride in 
the omnibus. 

One morning when it was necessary to feed 
one of the patients, who shut her teeth and 
made the matter difficult, the new attendant 
gave her a violent slap in the face. 

Myra was coaxing Miss Waters to eat. She 
looked up and said, “ I will not endure seeing 


154 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

these unfortunate creatures abused. I shall re- 
port you as soon as the doctor comes.” 

The attendant looked alarmed. “ I did n’t 
hurt her,” she said. “I did not think what I 
was doing ; she vexes me so. What is the dif- 
ference ? They do n’t know anything.” 

“They do know; they are made worse by 
such conduct. You are rough and unkind to 
them generally. I don’t think you should be 
an attendant,” said Myra stiffly. 

“Come now, don’t blab.” 

“ I shall report you as a duty.” 

“ See here, I ’ll lose my place if you do. I 
wont do it again. I need my wages here. I 
have no home and no friends.” 

Myra hesitated. “ If I say nothing this once, 
will you promise me to be kinder and never 
strike one again ?” 

“ Oh la, yes. I did n’t mean any harm,” said 
Miss Boggs. 

Myra concluded to pass over the error and 
wait for a reform. But in a day or two Miss 
Boggs’ disposition overcame her again, and Liz- 
zie being caught tearing up a large flowering 
geranium. Miss Boggs struck her twice with 
fury. Lizzie filled the air with her shrieks. 
This excited some of the others, and for an hour 
Babel reigned. Scarcely was the tumult over 
when the doctor came in, and Myra reported 


MYRA HAS VARIOUS EXPERIENCES. 1 55 

Miss Bog-gs for striking a patient. Miss Boggs 
roundly denied it. Myra appealed to Lizzie 
herself. 

“ La ! you can’t believe her ; she ’s crazy ; 

. she says anything,” said Miss Boggs. 

“You certainly struck her, and it is not the 
first time,” said Myra. 

“You are here for the good of patients, not 
to abuse them,” said the doctor. “ I will refer 
your case to the physician in charge.” 

Later in the day Miss Boggs was sent for. 
She denied doing more than “ just tap ” the pa- 
tient, and begged so hard against a dismissal 
that the chief doctor allowed her to stay, with a 
warning against any rude treatment of patients. 
Miss Boggs became more careful, but would not 
speak to Myra. 

The day that Myra’s month was up at the 
asylum she was called to the office. “ Here are 
your wages,” said the head surgeon curtly ; “we 
shall not need your services further.” 

Myra was amazed. She did not like asylum 
life and she longed unutterably for the little 
brown house, but she did not take kindly to 
such unceremonious dismissal. 

“ May I ask what fault you have to find ?” 
she asked. 

“ It does not matter ; you do not suit. Your 
place is filled.” 


56 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


I recognize your right to make any change 
you choose, but I have tried to do my best, and 
I think I ought to be told what my offence is,” 
said Myra firmly. 

The doctor hesitated. “ Very well, then. It 
seems that you take exception to our ways of 
managing here, and are saying that when the 
State Board meets there will be a change of 
officers.” 

“ Sir !” cried the astounded Myra, “ I never 
said such a word. I did not even know that 
there was a State Board. Who accuses me of 
such things?” 

“ Miss Boggs reports you as constantly talk- 
ing in this way.” 

“ If I constantly talk so,” said Myra stoutly, 
^‘then others beside Miss Boggs must have 
heard me. Ask others. I deny it.” 

'‘You deny it. Miss Boggs affirms it. I 
have no time to sift out such matters. One 
against one it is, and I cannot decide between 
you. You see yourself that such language 
would be ruinous to all order and discipline 
here.” 

“ Certainly it would, doctor, and if I used it 
I should deserve dismissal. But I never said 
such a word. Consider that I have no reason to 
make remarks against the administration, but 
Miss Boggs thinks she has reason to revenge 


MYRA HAS VARIOUS EXPERIENCES. I 57 

herself on me. I reported her for striking pa- 
tients. She said then she would ‘ be even with 
me for it.’ This is her way.” 

The doctor looked annoyed. He had for- 
gotten that Miss Milbury had reported Miss 
Boggs. But he had already engaged an attend- 
ant in Myra’s place. 

“ It may be as you say,” he said coldly. “ We 
are obliged to act upon what we hear. No doubt 
Miss Boggs denied that she struck a patient. I 
took your word for it then — I take hers now. 
If mistakes are made it cannot always be helped. 
No doubt your ward doctor can give you a 
recommendation to some other asylum. After 
to-morrow morning you will not be needed.” 

Myra, pale with indignation, went to her 
little room to pack her trunk. She observed 
that Miss Boggs looked triumphant. 


158 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER X. 

SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. 

“ In summer when the days are long, 

I love her as we loved of old ; 

My heart is light my step is strong, 

For love brings back those hours of gold.” 

The ward doctor raised his eyebrows and 
looked sharply at Miss Boggs when Myra told 
him of her curt dismissal. 

“ I am sorry you are going,” he said. “ I 
thought you would be one of our best attend- 
ants. You did Mrs. Ferrol a world of good. I 
have hopes of her coming out of this sickness 
all right.” But though he appreciated Myra’s 
work and regretted her departure, he did not 
feel that he was called upon to remonstrate with 
the surgeon in charge. 

Myra had a vacant hour in the afternoon and 
she went to find Miss Munson. 

That Boggs is a wretch,” said Miss Mun- 
son, “ and in a place like this such a revenge as 
she has taken is easy. I know many attendants 
who pass over instances of cruelty and unkind- 
ness which make their blood boil ; but they are 
afraid to speak for fear it will react on them.” 


SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. 1 59 

‘‘ I should not think any position worth pur- 
chasing by even tacitly conniving at what I felt 
was wrong,” said Myra. “I think the doctor 
was more than half convinced that I had been 
slandered, but he had made his plans and would 
not change them.” 

“ If he suspects that Boggs has made him 
her tool to punish you, you may be sure she will 
not be here very long. He will watch her 
closely, and at the first fault she goes. What 
do you mean to do ?” 

Go home,” said Myra heartily. 

Miss Munson led her to the window and 
looked critically at her. 

“Yes! Go home. Boggs has done you a 
service, though she did not intend it. This is 
no place for you. You feel things too keenly. 
Here one must be nice, but not too nice ! I see 
you have lost flesh and color and there are dark 
circles around your eyes. Let me look at your 
tongue! Yes, I thought so — tremulous. You 
are not sleeping well, you have no appetite, and 
you are growing nervous. This life does not 
suit you ; go home.” 

“ I mean to,” said Myra. “ Oh how good it 
will seem to be where I am not shivering all the 
time at unexpected horrible noises, and where I 
am not quaking with fear lest Lizzie or some 
one of the others should pounce upon me! 


l6o ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

Now tell me one thing : why is it, when attend- 
ants like Miss Boggs are so hated by the pa- 
tients, that they are not attacked? There are 
enough women in that ward to tear her in 
pieces. I should think she would be afraid of 
her life.” 

Her safety is in their having no power of 
concerted action. They cannot act in unison. 
If one alone attacked her, she could help her- 
self, or some of the others would be sure to 
help her, finding a melee very entertaining.” 

Myra went back to her corridor and Lizzie 
asked her to sing. Miss Waters had been taken 
to a ward on Miss Munson’s floor. Myra began 
to sing to Lizzie, and the others came near and 
seemed unusually quiet and contented. Miss 
Boggs said sneeringly, “ Singing ? You do n’t 
seem to mind being turned adrift.” 

“I don’t,” said Myra, “for I have a good 
home and plenty of friends.” With which little 
fling at Miss Boggs she contented herself. 

But next day when Myra was homeward 
bound, she indulged in a little unsatisfactory 
retrospect. She had left her home to make 
money and how much had she made ? Lizzie’s 
caper had cost three dollars, her home trip and 
incidentals five dollars. ShQ had in her pocket 
a new ten-dollar bill, sole result of her month’s 
work, and she had used Van’s four dollars for 


SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. l6l 

the trip to the asylum. “Ten dollars!” said 
Myra bitterly, “as the result of two months’ 
hard labor of two healthy and respectable young 
women! Really this world is a very difficult 
place in which to make a living.” 

She reviewed her life at the asylum, and felt 
that she had thrown her whole heart into her 
work and had done her very best, and she felt 
also that she had been treated with monstrous 
injustice. It is true she might have posed to 
herself as a martyr, suffering for having done 
her duty ; but Myra was not one of the women 
who enjoy the role of martyrdom. The more 
she considered the situation the less she was 
pleased with it. She wrought herself up into 
a state of indignation ; her cheeks flushed, her 
eyes sparkled ; she neither noticed the land- 
scape nor the people in the car nor the few 
crowded stations at which the express stopped. 

When she left home she had fancied it would 
be very pleasant to spend a day in the great city 
ten miles from the asylum. But now she had 
neither heart nor money for such an outing, and 
she had not so much as looked upon the distant 
roofs. She called to mind a little song of an old 
man whose life dream it had been to see Perpig- 
nan, but going there — 

“ The old man died upon the way : 

He never saw fair Perpignan.” 


Adam’s Daughters. 


II 


i 62 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

Just here, when she was becoming very furi- 
ous against her fate, she remembered that word 
of grandma’s when trouble had come upon her, 
“ Well, well ! If it pleases the good God to send 
me to the school of affliction, Satan shall not rob 
me of the best lessons that are to be learned 
there.” This memory was as a reviving breath 
from the home-land, and calmed a little the tu- 
mult of her spirit. 

At this moment some one came down the car 
and spoke her name. 

“ Miss Milbury ! Good morning. Have you 
been off on a jaunt? I did not expect to see any 
of our people so far from home.” 

It was Mr. Banbee, a member of Mr. Lowell’s 
church, and owner of a large farm about five 
miles from Poplar Rise, a rich man, hale and 
cheery ; when he had shaken hands he sat down 
beside her. “ Been pleasuring by yourself?” 

“No, indeed,” said Myra with wrathful joy. 
“ I have been off in a situation, to try and make 
my living ; and I did not suit and was dis- 
missed.” 

“ The people must have been hard to please,” 
said Mr. Banbee. “ Your folks will be glad of it, 
I know. They must have missed you. If you 
had stayed long you might have found things 
you liked better than our country ways.” 

“ I shall never like anything better than the 


SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. 163 

country,” said Myra, “ but in the country it is 
very hard to make a living. Our mother is work- 
ing more than is good for her, and we felt that 
we ought to relieve her. First Van went off and 
tried to do something, and she failed ; and then I 
went off and tried, and I failed. I do n’t think 
we shall let Teddie follow suit ; it does not pay.” 

** That ’s right,” said Mr. Banbee. Stay at 
home. That ’s the best place for all of you. I 
do n’t think the city ought to rob the country of 
its best people. And you don’t care for the 
city ?” 

“ I do n’t know what I might do if I had a 
chance,” said Myra, “ but as it happens I have 
never been to the city but once in a while for a 
day’s shopping. At present I am not likely to 
go on such errands, as I have no money to shop 
with. I have not been to the city, Mr. Banbee ; I 
have been to a lunatic asylum.” And then Myra 
described the asylum and its fashions to Mr. Ban- 
bee, who found the tale very entertaining. 

“ If you like,” he said, “ I ’ll write to that doc- 
tor and tell him he is a great idiot and a con- 
founded rascal.” 

“ No, do n’t,” said Myra, laughing, “ for he is 
neither. I think he is a very fine doctor, with a 
very heavy responsibility on his hands. Any- 
way, I am glad to get home again.” 

“ Yes,” said Mr. Banbee, “ I think it would be 


164 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

more justice to write and thank him in the name 
of your family, and of our town and church, for 
mot keeping you away longer. What put it into 
your head to go to such a horrible place ?” 

This opened the way for telling Van’s story 
of the “ Retreat for Nervous Invalids.” Myra 
expounded that matter to Mr. Banbee, who lis- 
tened with great interest. As she ended with 
the conclusion which she and Van had reached 
that Myra must go to the asylum to seek her 
fortune, the whistle blew for the junction, and 
in a little while after Myra was back in her own 
village. 

“ My sleigh is here,” said Mr. Banbee ; “ I can 
take you and your trunk horde. I go right past 
your door. Here, Ned,” he cried to his son, 
“ take Miss Milbury’s check and look up her 
trunk.” 

Thus it happened that Myra went home in 
much better style than Van had done. Instead 
of trudging through the snow, carrying the 
weight of her woes and her little hand-bag, she 
drove up snugly seated in Mr. Banbee’s sleigh, 
with wolfskin-robes tucked about her and Ned 
Banbee to carry in her trunk. 

Van was the only Milbury at home. Mamma 
was out nursing, and Teddie was not yet back 
from school. Van rUvShed to greet her sister. 
These girls were fond of each other, and effusive 



Adam’s Daughters. Page 164. 










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SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. 165 

in their methods no doubt. They had not been 
told that heartiness was “ bad form.” 

“ You are not sick, Myra dear !” cried Van. 

No ; never was better in my life,” said 
Myra, as she waved good-by to the Banbees and 
entered the kitchen. 

I ’ve seen you look better — nearly always,” 
said Van as she took off Myra’s hat. “ I have no 
hot doughnuts for you, girl, but I can make you 
tea and toast in no time.” 

Do n’t,” said Myra. “Mr. Banbee was on 
the cars, and he bought plenty of luncheon for 
us both. I should have kept a banana for Ted, 
only I thought it would look so queer. I wanf 
to talk. What are you doing? Sewing?” 

There was a child’s flannel wrapper on the 
machine. “ I have six of these to make,” said 
Van. “ Almost the first work in since you left. 
But I have four aprons engaged for Mrs. Gore.” 

“ That reminds me ; here is my contribution 
to the family purse. Observe, ten dollars ; your 
four and my six. We do not return to the pa- 
rental roof overburdened with gold.” 

Just here in came Teddie, who had caught a 
ride, and then Myra’s story of “ Four Weeks in 
an Insane Asylum ” had to be told, and the dusk 
came down over the three Milbury maids as they 
sat around the kitchen fire and heard how Myra 
had failed to m^ke her fortune. 


I66 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

“ Uncle Daniel and Aunt Sara Ann would find 
in this full justification of all their warnings not 
to go abroad for work, but to make our living at 
home,” said Teddie. 

“ But — if the living wont be made ?” said Van. 

“It will, somehow,” said Teddie. “ I shall 
have to play I am grandma, and quote her text, 
‘ I have been young and now am old, yet have I 
never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed 
begging bread.’ ” 

“ It is well,” said Myra, “ that we can expect 
something from the Lord for other people’s sake, 
if we cannot for our own.” 

“ It is always for some other One’s sake, and 
never for our own,” said Teddie gently. “ What- 
ever comes, comes through Christ, and you know 
it is written, ‘ If he spared not his own Son, but 
gave him for our sakes, will he not with him 
freely give us all things ?’ ” 

“You are a dear little soul, Teddie,” said 
Van, giving her sister a pat on the head, “ and 
thanks to your two texts, we will not strike up 
‘ The Three Maries ’ nor ‘ Lorraine, Lorree,’ but 
we will get our supper and go to bed.” 

Myra came home on Tuesday afternoon. 
Saturday morning she was busily making bread 
and pies, while Van finished the aprons for Mrs. 
Gore. 

“ There is Uncle Daniel,” said Myra, looking 


SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. 167 

through the window. “ I wonder what is up ? 
He is in his good sleigh and has the buffalo robe 
over him.” She went to open the door for her 
uncle. She had on a great blue calico baking- 
apron and there was a little spot of flour on her 
nose. 

“ He has on his best Sunday suit, too,” said 
Van, making a pause at her machine work. 
“ Where can he be going ?” 

And here Uncle Daniel came in saying it 
was a cold day, and he had never known so 
many days of sleighing without a thaw, and if 
winter held on at that rate, it would be impossi- 
ble to raise crops. 

I saw a bluebird this morning,” said Van, 
“ in spite of snow.” 

“ And a large flock of wild geese flew north- 
ward in a great straggling V,” said Myra, “ so I 
think the weather is going to break up. Are 
you going anywhere, uncle ?” 

“ Only here,” said Uncle Daniel, laying aside 
his best overcoat. He handled his overcoat with 
respect ; it was his most expensive garment. 
Van remarked a certain importance in Uncle 
Daniel’s mien. Had he come into a fortune by 
any chance ? 

“Seems you came home with Mr. Banbee, 
Myra !” said Uncle Daniel, warming his hands 
by the stove. 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


1 68 


“ Yes,” said Myra ; “he came on the cars 
when I was about half-way home. He was real 
kind and pleasant.” 

“ Eh, so,” said Uncle Daniel. “ Well, he was 
round to see me last night and wanted me to do 
an errand for him. Mostly I think people had 
better do their own errands.” 

“If he wants shirts made,” said Van, “ we 
can’t do it, because we do n’t know how. If we 
tried we should make them badly and he would 
not want to wear them.” 

“ He does not want shirts,” said Uncle Dan- 
iel. 

“ What does he want, then ? A wrapper for 
his mother? We could do that, I reckon. Myra, 
I hope you did n’t say anything that made him 
think he must send us work out of charity,” 
cried Van. 

“ Of course not,” said Myra, pinching the pie- 
crust into a neat pattern. 

“ He does not want a wrapper,” said Uncle 
Daniel. “ He wants — Myra.” 

“ Wants Myra !” cried Van, turning from an 
apron. “ Does he think we are so bad off we 
have to go out to service ?” 

“Van, don’t put your oar in all the time,” 
said Uncle Daniel. But Myra turned with a 
flaming face ; she understood. 

“ Uncle Daniel, how could you come !” 


SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. 169 

‘‘ I had to. The man is in earnest, and he is 
a good man, healthy, well-to-do, well spoken of, 
kind-hearted.” 

‘‘ His wife has only been dead six months !” 

“Well, it is a little hasty, but when a man 
has a farm and a family he may be excused 
about waiting.” 

“ Uncle Daniel, he is twice as old as I am.” 

“ But that is n’t old, Myra, and he ’s active as 
at twenty.” 

“ Why his boy Ned is fourteen !” 

“ Yes, nice boy too, and he has only him and 
his mother in the family. He said to tell you 
you could have whatever you liked, and not 
work more than you chose, and always keep a 
servant, as you did at the Poplars, and have a 
horse and buggy always at your command.” 

“ Uncle Daniel, please stop ! I should not 
think of such a thing. The idea of marrying 
for such considerations !” 

“ I ’ve got to do my errand,” said Uncle Dan- 
iel valiantly. “ He says that he will ask nothing 
better than for you to bring your mother to live 
with you, and she need never do a turn of work 
again as long as she lives; only sit and visit 
with his mother. He is inclined* to be very lib- 
eral and considering.” 

“ Van,” said Myra, turning to her sister, “ I 
want you to notice. I have been dismissed from 


170 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

the asylum, but I am offered a situation where 
I am to get my board and clothes, the use of a 
horse, and the support of my mother, a situa- 
tion, mark you, from which I cannot be dis- 
missed at a moment’s notice — a permanency. 
Uncle, why didn’t you tell him we girls had 
always said we never meant to marry ?” 

“ Because that ’s a point where girls are 
always changing their minds,” said Mr. Banbee’s 
ambassador. 

“We have not changed ours,” said Myra, 
“ and if we ever do, which we wont, it will be 
because we marry for love, and I think love 
would only come after a reasonable acquaint- 
ance with a person of proper age — and — and — 
all that. I am sorry you came. You ’ll have to 
tell him, ‘ No, no, no ! not on any consideration, 
now nor ever ’ — and — and — I suppose. Van, I 
ought to say I ’m much obliged ?” 

“ Say, ‘ No, thank you,’ like a polite child,” 
observed Van. 

“You understand, uncle, it wont do, and I 
do n’t want to hear any more about it,” said 
Myra, putting her pies in the oven and shutting 
the door with a vindictive bang. 

“Final, is it?” said Uncle Daniel, a twinkle 
in his eyes. 

“Yes, final,” said Myra. 

“ A very good home, a good husband, and 


SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. 171 

plenty of money ; it might be worth considera- 
tion. But if you wont, you wont. Well, Van, 
what do you say ? If Myra would not, I was to 
make you the same offer. Will you take it ?” 

Van was on her feet in a second, her cheeks 
crimson, her eyes blazing. 

“ I might as well have touched a match to a 
powder magazine,” soliloquized Uncle Daniel. 

“ Uncle, how dare you ! It is an insult. How 
could you !” 

But here in the midst of Van’s tragedy Myra 
cast herself on the nearest chair, crying out, 
“ O Van, Van ! You are the second choice — only 
think !” And the comedy of the situation over- 
came Van so that she too sat down ^nd laughed 
till the tears came into her eyes. Uncle Daniel 
joined the chorus. 

“ If he is in that frame of mind,” said Myra, 
willing to take one or the other, without any 
violent preference for either, he is not likely to 
break his heart over a refusal.” 

“You see,” explained Uncle Daniel, “he sort 
of made me say I ’d do his errand before I quite 
understood what was up ; and after all I reck- 
oned you’d take it easier from me than from 
him, and I do n’t blame you a mite. If he wants 
a housekeeper let him hire one, but I do n’t hold 
to marrying without love. I married Sara Ann 
because I loved her, and I ’ve loved her better 


1/2 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


every year since. It ’s only love, girls, that can 
help you over the hard places that come in every 
married life. I ’m mighty glad not to see Adam’s 
daughters marrying for a home.” 

“I think that would be positively wicked,” 
said Van. 

“ Girls,” said Uncle Daniel in his quiet, em^ 
phatic way, I should be glad to see you mar- 
ried, if you married for love good men with 
whom you could walk hand in hand towards 
heaven. Marriage is a holy ordinance instituted 
by God, and it is for the happiness and benefit 
of mankind. But I find in the Bible that mar- 
riage is a type of the union between Christ and 
his Church, and so I do n’t take it that it should 
be just a business relation for convenience, but 
a spiritual relation of love and faith. If we have 
no love in the married relation, we cannot show 
the patience and self-sacrifice and trust and devo- 
tion that are in the relation between Christ and 
his Church. I see in the Bible that very much 
is made of the love between the Lord Jesus and 
his people ; and love, girls, is not a thing to joke 
and trifle about, and I ’ve never seen you inclined 
to do that ; it is something serious and holy, and 
to my mind it doesn’t start in a man’s wanting 
a nurse or a housekeeper, or a woman’s wanting 
a home or gowns. You’ve looked at it right, 
just the way I knew you would.” 


SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. 1 73 

At these earnest and simple words from Un- 
cle Daniel the merriment of the girls subsided 
for a little and they wondered within themselves 
whether ever into their hearts should come this 
holy and satisfying love of which Uncle Daniel 
spoke. 

^‘What next is likely to happen?” asked 
Myra of Van, when Cupid’s envoy had buttoned 
himself up in the big beaver coat and departed. 

“We are going to have our humble dinner 
and get up a jolly good story to tell Ted and 
mammy,” replied Van. 

In spite of Uncle Daniel’s prognostications a 
thaw set in. The bluebirds and wild geese had 
been true weather prophets. Uncle Daniel’s 
boys announced that they were coming soon to 
“ make garden ” for their cousins. “ We ’ll get 
it all dug and smoothed and laid out, and you 
can do the rest. Father says it will be good for 
you. You will feel more cheerful if you have a 
nice vegetable garden and some flowers.” 

So they mended the fence, trimmed up the 
one cherry and two apple trees ; pruned the an- 
cient currant-bushes and dug about the roots, 
and soon peas, lettuce, onions, and cucumbers 
peered in delicate green above the brown earth. 


74 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER XI. 

A COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS. 

“ Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, 

Onward through life he goes ; 

Each morning sees some task begin. 

Each evening sees it close ; 

Something attempted, something done. 

Has earned a night’s repose.” 

Spring and early summer, which hitherto 
had seemed to fill the Milbury girls with their 
own vigor and general rejoicing, did not bring 
much jubilation this first year of their exile. 
All the former years of their lives they had 
found so many interests in the return of the 
seasons ; now they had no wide fields, no luxu- 
riant gardens, no barnyard full of mild-faced 
calves, no pasture-land where bleating lambs 
and their snowy mothers were to be visited and 
petted, no scores of fluffy yellow chicks and cal- 
low ducks. The rich promise of the autumn 
days had mocked the four, as Hagar-like they 
had left their home. Their only item of landed 
property was now that lot in the village ceme- 
tery where their father and Uncle Aaron were 
united in death as they had been in life. 

The girls were young, they had youth’s fund 


A COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS. 1 75 

of cheerfulness and hope and desire for happi- 
ness, but they could not hide from themselves 
that things were going but badly with them. 
People said that “ the Milburys must be seeing 
hard times ; they did n’t see how they took care 
of themselves. Of course it would end in their 
falling back on Daniel. Daniel’s house ought 
to be as big as Noah’s ark, with his six boys, his 
wife, his mother, his sister-in law, and now these 
other four to take care of.” 

But the Milbury maids had no idea of falling 
back on Uncle Daniel. 

“ There ’s one thing,” said Myra to Van, on 
one of the very many days when they had noth- 
ing to do but work in their little garden ; “Un- 
cle Daniel must not know how little we earn, 
and whatever we do, we must not add to his bur- 
dens. If he has us to take care of he will not 
be able to let Ned go through college, and Ned 
is the only one of us all, unless it is Teddie, who 
cares for a good education. And then too there 
are yet seven hundred dollars of mortgage to 
be paid on that farm, laid on when his big barn 
was destroyed. Uncle Daniel will have all he 
can do to provide for his old age and bring up 
his family.” 

“ We ’ll keep off his hands, whatever hap- 
pens,” said Van, “ but I feel downright discour- 
aged. I have n’t had two days’ work a week for 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


176 

nearly two months, and you have not had over 
seven or eight dollars’ worth of sewing"at home 
in that time. If we knew how to make dresses 
handsomely we could have made Nell Gracy’s 
wedding clothes and Nora Bell’s outfit for school. 
But we cannot make dresses, and we sew slowly, 
and our button-holes are only moderately good. 
I ’ve calculated that poor little Teddie walks 
eighteen miles a week, and her eight dollars a 
month don’t go far after the rent is paid and 
her shoes and overshoes are bought.” 

“ And mother’s nursing is only for about half 
time, and some of the people cannot pay over 
four dollars a week. And it is just as well moth- 
er cannot get work all the time ; she would sim- 
ply kill herself. She is breaking down as it is ; 
she never was used to lifting, and night work 
always hurt her ; she needs her sleep. It makes 
me nearly cry to see how hollow her eyes look 
and the tender-hearted Myra bent her head 
over the beets she was weeding and cried in 
earnest. 

“ Whatever shall we do ?” continued Myra in 
a distracted way. “ I have thought and thought, 
but there seems no opening for us, not even ser- 
vice ! Folks that want work-girls here want 
those able to lift and do big washings, and milk 
cows, and work twelve hours in the day. We 
do n’t know how, and we are not able to do it, 


A COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS. 

and Uncle Daniel wouldn’t let us. I wish we 
could run away from here and find any kind of 
work. I ’d go as chamber-maid in a hotel if I 
could find a hotel that would take me.” 

That was it, what could they do for a living ? 
The question which when the last year’s roses 
bloomed had first confronted them as a mere 
matter of speculation, now stood before them in 
deadly earnest, as an instant and pressing neces- 
sity. 

“ I think,” said Van, meditatively surveying 
her beet bed, “ that the work that has paid us 
best since April has been this in the garden and 
the raising those two broods of chickens ; those 
and the three laying hens have supplied us with 
three-quarters of our living. And to keep the 
fowls and the garden apart has been work.” 

“The garden and the chickens wont bring 
us clothes, and shoes will be a cause of outlay 
soon enough,” said Myra. “ I wonder if we could 
take an agency of any kind.” 

“ I should hate it,” cried Van. “ I know just 
how it would be. We should wear out more 
shoes than what we really earned would replace, 
and people would say, ‘ Of course we did n’t 
want this or that, but it was one of the Milbury 
girls brought it and we could not refuse.’ Then 
they ’d go on with the old story, that we did not 
make half a fight for our property, and we should 


Adam’s Daughters. 


12 


178 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


have brought our case into court. As if we 
would have gone to court to show that Uncle 
Aaron had signed for more than he was worth, 
and had claimed as his what was ours !” 

“ It would be like begging, I suppose,” said 
Myra, reverting to the agency. “ If we beg let 
us do it far from here. I have wasted a dollar 
in stamps writing to advertised places where it 
was promised that ‘ Ladies could find useful 
and easy occupation without outlay and at home.’ 
Most of the places proposed that I should send 
them one dollar, two, or five, for materials and 
directions for the work. One brought me a vile 
book and two insulting letters. I ’m afraid to 
write any more replies to advertisements ; I ’m 
afraid to start off alone and look for work. 
I ’d write to Aunt Harriet Proctor for advice, 
though she is not a real relation and we have 
no claim on her, but she is very sick I hear, 
and has been taken to the mountains.” 

“ Let us try to work out our way for our- 
selves,” said Van. 

“ I believe I should have taken hold as Ted- 
die did, and prepared for an examination for 
teacher’s certificate. I think some of the trus- 
tees who know of our case would give me a 
school if I was fit to teach. Oh I wish I had.” 

“ Do n’t wish back^ work forzvard^' said Van. 

Begin now, and Teddie can help you perhaps. 


A COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS. 1 79 

If Teddie gets a school this fall you can take the 
Steele children, and at least keep a roof over our 
heads. I ’d begin that right off if I were you. 
1 11 do all the housework and gardening, and 
you study when we have no sewing.” 

“ It is better to have an object at least,” said 
Myra, jumping up from her weeding and re- 
pairing to the house, where, having washed her 
hands, she took down Teddie ’s books and went 
valiantly to work at an arithmetic. Van heard 
her practising herself on tables. 

“The ranks of teachers are over full,” said 
Van bitterly ; “ and where there are more teach- 
ers than there are schools one who has not great 
gifts and been through the Normal fS not likely 
to get a place except as a matter of charity or 
favoritism of trustees.” 

And so it went on through June, July, and 
August. Mrs. Milbury’s health seemed slowly 
giving way. 

The wolf at whose intrusive nose Van and 
Myra had been pricking with ineffectual needles, 
and whose entrance Teddie had tried to debar 
with two silver dollars a week, now put not only 
his nose but his head and paws over the thresh- 
old, and was very threatening indeed. By this 
time clothes became a prominent question. The 
two black gowns each, and that of cheap mate- 
rial, which they had allowed themselves the year 


l8o ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

before for their mourning, were nearly worn 
out ; the hats were so cruelly shabby, and the 
shoes! Oh how much shoes cost! They had 
made, re-made, and mended their wardrobes in 
the many hours when no paid work had come 
in ; they had gone back to their colored cloth- 
ing, but even that would give way before an- 
other year was out. Myra sang “The Three 
Fishers ” more than ever, and Van sang “ The 
Three Maries,” and when they were both terribly 
downcast they sang “ Lorraine, Lorraine, Lor- 
ree and Teddie coming home from her teach- 
ing would hear them and say brightly, “ Cheer 
up ! God is the God of the poor.” 

Did Teddie have some source of good-cheer 
more than the rest? Van and Myra thought so. 
Wallace Cranshaw, Mrs. Lowell’s brother, always 
came home from church and prayer-meeting 
with Teddie. Destitution of fashionable apparel 
had not seemed to detract from this young wo- 
man’s charms, and Teddie appeared to be just as 
happy walking and talking in her shabby black 
gown with young Cranshaw as if she had a 
racket in her hand and the most artistic of ten- 
nis costumes to set off her beauty. Her sisters 
began to make little hints and invidious sugges- 
tions, and as Teddie failed to retaliate they grew 
more bold in attack. 

“ Dear me,” said Teddie one morning, “ I 


A COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS. l8l 

must be off on part of the twenty miles a week 
which bankrupts me in shoes.” 

“ I think you rather enjoy the walks, you are 
so sure of company,” said Myra. “Don’t you 
walk farther than you need sometimes?” 

“ Last night, for instance, you forgot the dan- 
ger to your shoes,” said Van, “ and passed the 
house by a quarter of a mile, when you came 
back from prayer-meeting.” 

“ But,” continued Myra, “ this week she will 
not need to go to the postoffice so frequently as 
last week and week before.” 

“ Perhaps you are contributing to the maga- 
zines, Teddie,” said Van. 

Teddie looked down, flushed, but only said, 
“ What trash you talk !” 

Mamma Milbury had seemed not to hear. 
Now she looked up. “ Teddie, will you get my 
valise ready ? I may be called away to-day. See 
that all the buttons are on my flannel wrapper, 
and do n’t forget my work-bag, with buttons and 
darning cotton.” 

Then, when Teddie had gone up stairs, mam- 
ma showed that she had heard all her daughters’ 
nonsense. She looked at Van and Myra and 
said earnestly, “ Now I want you two girls to let 
Teddie entirely alone about Wallace Cranshaw. 
There is not a better young man in the State. I 
have talked with your uncle Daniel about him. 


82 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


He is a gentleman and a Christian, healthy, 
amiable, well brought up. I see plainly that he 
is very fond of Teddie, and I think she cares for 
him. Do not by your teasing and joking make 
her afraid or ashamed of an honest affection. 
As the wife of a good man Teddie may find her 
best happiness.” 

“ But, mammy,” said Van, “ you know that 
we intended to be ‘ the Milbury maids ’ to the 
end of the chapter! We don’t want to lose 
Teddie !” 

We have little to offer in the way of keep- 
ing her, poor dear,” said Mrs. Milbury with a 
sigh. “ But that is not the question. To love 
and to marry has been the world’s way since 
Eden, and if the Lord orders this way for Ted- 
die do not let us interfere. When I go away to- 
day I want to feel that you will let Teddie strict- 
ly alone in this matter, and not attempt either to 
•make or mar.” 

“All right,” said Van dolefully ; “ but if Ted- 
die betrays us, Myra, you and I will stick stanch- 
ly to each other and to mammy.” 

A day or two after when Teddie came in 
about three o’clock from her governessing, she 
found Van and Myra sitting close together work- 
ing on a large braided mat some one had asked 
them to make. She stood by them half shyly 
for a minute, then bent and kissing first one and 


A COMMITTEE OF WATS AND MEANS. 1 83 

then the other said warmly, ‘^You have been 
such dear good sisters to me !” Then she went 
up stairs. 

What does that mean ?” said Myra, looking 
at Van. 

Van mused. “ I know what it means. Come 
on, Myra, we ’ll have it out with that Teddie !” 
And she led the way up stairs. Teddie had 
been washing her face, and her wet curly hair 
lay all about her shoulders. Her other dress— 
she had but two — her best gloves and necktie, 
were on the bed. Van led the charge. 

‘'Teddie — Theodora Milbury! I know you 
mean to marry that Wallace Cranshaw !” 

“ What if I do ?” retorted Teddie courageous- 
ly, but disappearing in the towel as she rubbed 
her face vigorously. 

“ Well — you — little goose — I hope — you ’ll be 
happy !” said the showery Myra with a great sob. 

Van braced herself up. “Of course, Ted- 
die — you have a perfect right — and I did n’t ex- 
pect it of you — yes, I did though, and — after all it 
is sensible, and all right, for he is very — nice and 
I am sure you care for him, Teddie.” 

“ But you are not going to be married right 
off ! Where are you going, Teddie ?” gasped the 
weeping Myra. 

“ Right off !” cried Teddie, coming out of the 
towel eclipse radiant, and bursting into laughter. 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


184 

Myra, are you crazy ! Why we shall not be 
married for months, for years ! He is nearly as 
poor as I am, but I like him all the better for 
that. Where am I going? Wallace is coming 
for me, and we are going to see mamma, and 
then to see grandma and Uncle Daniel’s folks. 
That ’s all.” 

Teddie and Cranshaw remained to tea at 
Uncle Daniel’s, and then came back to spend the 
evening with the girls at the little brown house. 
It was a warm, moonlight evening and the doors 
and windows were all open, as the four sat 
together and chatted of the future. 

Teddie’s lover was a courageous, enterprising 
young fellow, whose chief capital consisted of 
good sense, good character, and good intentions. 
He had been somewhat over a year in the vil- 
lage, his brother-in-law, the pastor, wishing him 
to settle there. But fortune came too slowly in 
the sleepy old Pennsylvania town ; Wallace 
Cranshaw was in haste to have a home to offer to 
Teddie. He meant to go West immediately, and 
hoped in a year and a half to have prospered so 
well that he could come back for a wife. 

This first love affair in the family awakened 
the intense interest of Mrs. Milbury and the two 
elder girls. Dear Teddie’s lover was at once 
looked upon as a son and a brother, and the 
deepest anxiety was felt for his happiness and 


A COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS. 1 85 

safety. He had shown his good sense in admi- 
ring Teddie beyond all other girls, young or old, 
rich or poor ; Teddie loved him, and that was 
enough for Teddie’s family ; they took him at 
once to their hearts. 

Teddie’s future home and its furnishing 
stood equally large in the future of them all ; 
indeed Van and Myra considered these matters 
far more than Teddie did. Saying good-by to 
Wallace Cranshaw for an indefinite period filled 
Teddie’s thoughts, while her sisters had time to 
think how Teddie’s trousseau should be provi- 
ded. There was a deal of pride in the Milburys 
in spite of their misfortunes, all the more per- 
haps because of their misfortunes. The girls 
considered it quite impossible that Teddie should 
marry without a suitable wardrobe and a fair 
share of blankets, napery, and other household 
plenishing. While Teddie was yet in tears from 
the parting with her lover, Myra and Van were 
immediately discussing the question whether in 
two years’ time they could provide their darling 
Teddie with a suitable outfit to go away among 
strangers. 

Van inventoried the family treasures, and 
laid aside for Teddie the dozen silver spoons, 
the butter-knife, cake-basket, caster, and silver 
pitcher which remained to them out of the 
wreck of their family fortunes. These were 


86 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


polished, wrapped in tissue, put into two flannel 
bags, and laid away for Teddie. Teddie remon- 
strated in vain. 

“We are never going to marry,” said Van 
and Myra, “ and besides we shall be here among 
those who know us. You will go among stran- 
gers, and people are apt to judge one by what 
one has.” 

“You’ll be getting married, and need these 
things yourselves. You have the better right 
to them ; you are older,” said Teddie. 

The others scoffed at the idea. “ Never ! 
We ’ll never marry ! We would n’t think of 
such a thing! Besides, you’ll be getting rich 
out West, and be able to fit us out like royal 
princesses.” 

“We ought, as descendants of the Puritans, 
to be above such nonsense as dress,” said Ted- 
die, between laughing and crying. “In 1651 
the Council rebuked the Puritan citizens ‘for 
intolerable excess and bravery in apparel,’ and 
forbid ‘ all good Christians to wear gold or silver 
lace or such other gew-gaws.’ Does n’t St. Paul 
say women don’t need adornment of gold or 
pearls or broidered array ?” 

“ Be sure you ’ll get neither, dear Ted,” said 
her sisters. “If we find you in enough cotton 
and woollen gowns we shall do well.” 

But at midnight, when mamma Milbury out 


A COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS. 1 8 / 

nursing was busy over her patient, and curly- 
headed Teddie was sleeping the sleep of the 
just, Van and Myra held a family council, some- 
thing after the fashion of the year-gone garret 
conclaves. They were in night-gowns and slip- 
pers, and sat on the bed in the room over the 
sitting-room. When Mrs. Milbury was at home 
she and Van shared this roopi together. The 
kerosene-lamp on the bureau, rather uncomfort- 
ably near the bed, illuminated the girls and the 
treasures they had spread on the counterpane, 
their remaining contributions to Teddie’s future 
outfit, and which Van had just rescued from the 
camphor chest, which, covered with chintz and 
placed under the window, served as a divan, and 
made up for the lack of chairs. 

“ One counterpane, three pairs of nice pillow- 
cases, three damask towels, one table-cloth, and 
six napkins,” enumerated Myra. “ Oh, Van ! 
what a beggarly little lot it is for one of the Mil- 
bury maids. Our Teddie cannot be married and 
go off among strangers with only such a few 
things, and where are we to get more ?” 

“And then her clothes !” said Van. “ When 
we come to count them up after two years’ more 
use is taken out of them, she will be really with 
nothing to wear, a true Flora McFlimsy !” 

“ Do n’t joke, it ’s dreadful ; it paralyzes me to 
think of it,” said Myra, on the verge of a cry. 


88 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“We are not saving anything ; we are getting 
behind rather, and our clothes will soon be mere 
shreds. If Teddie is shabby now, what will she 
be in a year and a half ? And she is so cheerful 
and hopeful, poor little soul.” 

“ The thing is,” said Van, “ that I believe 
Teddie is a better Christian than any of us, and 
trusts in God mor^, and prays more. She does n t 
say much, but I believe she prays over every- 
thing, and then just leaves her troubles with 
God and takes courage. I wish I could.” 

“ It would be right,” said Myra questioningly, 
“to pray over this matter of getting Teddie 
properly provided with clothes, and so on ?” 

“Of course it would!” cried Van warmly. 
“ I was talking about prayer with Mrs. Lowell, 
the last day I sewed there. She says she prays 
over everything. I asked her if sh^ would pray 
over finding her thimble if she had lost it. She 
said, ‘ Why not, especially if the loss was hinder- 
ing needed work and making me nervous and 
irritated ? That would be more important than 
the hair of my head or the fall of a sparrow.’ 
She said that the calm and comfortable mind 
of one of God’s children was not a matter of 
indifference to him, and it was right to pray 
over whatever disturbed us.” 

“ I ’ve been thinking of something like this,” 
said Myra, laying their treasures back in the 


A COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS. 1 89 

camphor chest, “and to tell the truth, Van, I 
have prayed more this last year than ever I did 
in my life. It hasn’t come to much yet though.” 

“ Perhaps it ’s helped you to £-row, Myra,” 
said Van thoughtfully. She was handing Myra 
the tablecloth as she spoke, and the eyes of both 
fell on the meagre little store they were hoard- 
ing for Teddie. The lamp was nearly burned 
out, and gave a depressed melancholy light, low 
as their fortunes. They stood together looking 
gloomily at their collection and their prospects. 

“ More must be earned !” said Van decisively. 
“ Teddie will need a black silk dress, a colored 
muslin, a travelling suit, a neat afternoon dress, 
a couple of wrappers, besides two each of hats, 
wraps, pairs of gloves, and boots. And then 
there will be white goods, hose, handkerchiefs, 
collars and cuffs ; our father’s daughter shall not 
look like a beggar !” 

“ Horrors !” cried Myra, “ we shall never get 
all those things together ; we might just as well 
give up in despair.” 

“ I wont give up in despair,” said Van. “I’m 
going to think a way out of it. We ’ll talk it 
over, when I have thought.” 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


190 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE DAY OF REST. 

“ That which the hour creates, 

That can it use alone.” faust. 

“ Oh dear me ! I am so tired I ’m nearly 
dead !” Thus sighed Teddie. Teddie was lying 
on the lounge in the kitchen ; her hands were 
clasped above her head, and she lay on her back 
with her feet — in very shabby boots — resting on 
the end of the lounge. A somewhat unlady- 
like position, but restful, and just then Teddie 
was intent rather upon rest than etiquette. 

“You have had a hard day, have you?” said 
Myra. It was Saturday night and Myra was 
putting away the work. 

“ I should say I had ! As the nurse is gone, 
Mrs. Steele brought the baby into the school- 
room, remarking that ‘ she must spend the morn- 
ing at the dressmaker’s, and the baby would n’t 
be a bit of trouble.’ Trouble! He distracted 
the children so they would not study. He 
showed the most amazing appetite for chalk, 
ink, and paper. Then Geraldine had an ear- 
ache, and cried and cried. I put cotton in her 
ear and tied her head up in a silk handkerchief. 


THE DAY OF REST. 


19 


but she just howled with pain. Then I remem- 
bered grandma’s remedy, and I went to the 
kitchen for some raisins and the olive oil. I 
had to take the baby along for fear of what he 
might eat in my absence. I boiled the raisins 
over a spirit-lamp, dipped one in oil and put it 
in Geraldine’s ear. Then I went for a shawl 
and a pillow and made her a little bed and 
tucked her up warm. She began to feel better, 
and I thought it was time to put in a fresh raisin, 
and there, while I was fixing Geraldine’s bed, 
that Clarence had eaten up the rest of the rais- 
ins ! I had to go for more, and every time I left 
the room I had to carry the baby, and he weighs 
twenty-two pounds ! Next Gertrude became 
very saucy and said I was spending all my time 
with ‘those brats’ instead of hearing her his- 
tory. I reproved her for very improper lan- 
guage, and she flounced out of the room and 
banged the door. Then Clarence announced 
that he meant to go out and play. It was Sat- 
urday, he said, and I had no right to expect les- 
sons. As it was morning I refused to let him 
go, and he flew into a rage and threw his arith- 
metic through a window-pane. The pane was 
large and expensive, and when Mrs. Steele came 
home she was very angry.” 

“ I hope she gave the young man a whip- 
ping,” said Van. 


192 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ She did not ; she never reproved Clarence 
at all. She said I ought to have enough govern- 
ment over the children to prevent such occur- 
rences. It seemed to me that, as she has had 
that boy on hand for eight years, she should 
have had enough government and taught him 
self-control so that he would not give way to 
his temper in that style.” 

“She had no business to ask you to come 
and teach Saturday,” cried Van. “The five 
ordinary schooldays are all you engaged for ; 
and here is the second Saturday she has kept 
you teaching.” 

“Not teaching, nurse-maiding. It is all be- 
cause she has no nurse, and so she requests as a 
favor that I should be there Saturday, and I 
do n’t know how to refuse.” 

“You shall refuse or I ’ll go and refuse for 
you,” said Van. “You are all tired out, and this 
is not to happen again. Your dealings with 
Mrs. Steele are business, and she has no right 
to try and sneak in favors.” 

“Well, never mind; I will not do it again, 
and I shall be rested by to-morrow morning. 
How glad I am that to-morrow will be Sunday ! 
What should we do if the week had not such an 
entirely beautiful day as the Sabbath in it? I 
feel as if the cares and worries of the week fall 
away from my spirit as one drops off a soiled or 


THE DAY OF REST. 


193 


worn garment, and I may put on garments of 
praise. Mrs. Steele is always quoting Emerson, 
and she goes over some saying of his, that good 
clothes give a person a feeling of satisfaction 
and nobility which even religion is unable to 
bestow. I do not know whether she has quoted 
right or not, and I am not sure that good clothes 
would have such a mellifluous effect upon me ; 
but I do know that when I put away the week 
with all its vexations and small irritations and 
its tire and strain, and get where I can read the 
Psalms or Isaiah or Revelation, I feel as if I had 
gone up into better society and reached a higher 
level, had on a wedding garment, and was called 
to the King’s feast and must behave accord- 
ingly.” 

“ ‘ Sweet day, so calm, so cool, so bright. 

Bridal of earth and sky, 

The dews shall weep thy fall to-night. 

For thou must die !’ ” 

recited Myra. 

That is not so good as — 

‘“The Sabbaths of man’s life 

Are jewels threaded on Time’s string, 

A necklace to adorn the wife 
Of heaven’s most glorious King,’ ” 

said Van, looking up from her book. 

‘‘ What are you doing. Van ?” asked Teddie, 
drawing a long breath. Already her inelegant 

. 13 


Adam'8 Daughters. 


194 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


position and the talk with her sisters was resting 
her. 

“Working at my Sunday-school lesson for 
that terrible class,” said Van. 

“If the class is terrible why do n’t you give 
it up ?” 

“Nothing could induce me to part with it, 
because the class says if I desert it it will march 
out of the school. I call it terrible because I 
feel so incapable of teaching such a class, and I 
am so afraid of every individual in it. I am 
always in despair lest I shall fail to interest the 
creatures, and they will begin to whistle or sing 
street songs or do something dreadful. When 
the door is closed between my class-room and 
the big schoolroom my heart sinks way down 
into my boots.” 

“It was so funny,” said Myra, “that when 
Mr. Lowell had succeeded in hunting those ten 
young men into the school, and they all sat 
there by the door ready to bolt at a minute’s 
warning, they declined Mrs. Steele for a teacher 
because she ‘ wore too many fol-de-rols,’ and 
Miss Sharp because ‘ she looked too old and fee- 
ble-like,’ and Mrs. Dean because ‘ she was n’t 
good-looking,’ and singled out you, demanding 
to be taught by ‘ that there tall miss in black ” 
and Myra laughed, as she had often laughed be- 
fore, at the case of Van and her class. 


THE DAY OF REST. 


195 


The class in question consisted of ten stal- 
wart working-men, most of them young, who had 
come to the village for a time to build a rail- 
road bridge. To get them into Sunday-school 
at all Mr. Lowell esteemed a great achievement, 
and as Van was the teacher of their unanimous 
choice, with all her inexperience she had to 
assume the task of instruction. There was a 
certain originality in Van, and perhaps the men 
had intuitively divined it. 

'' Can I teach just as I choose ?” Van asked 
Mr. Lowell. 

Any way so you keep them every Sunday 
and give them the gospel.” 

I cannot sit down and teach the regular ’les- 
son,” said Van. “I doubt if I could hold their 
attention, and in six or eight weeks they will be 
gone and might have received but little help 
from the few scraps which would be to them 
disconnected. If I can get them to know some- 
thing of the Bible, to care to read it, to want to 
own it, to go to it for instruction, I think that 
will be the best thing I can do for them.” 

“ So do I,” said Mr. Lowell. “ But not one 
of them now reads the Bible or owns one.” 

“ Then,” said Van, “ I wish you would put 
ten of the Bible Society’s forty-cent Bibles on 
my class-room table next Sunday.” 

This was done, and Van made her little speech. 


96 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ This is the book we are to study. Here is 
one for each of you. They cost forty cents each ; 
but I do not want you to buy books you do not 
know anything about and may not like nor want 
to take with you when you leave. I lend you 
the books for the time you attend here. When 
you are ready to go, any one who wants to buy 
his book can buy it ; any one who would like his 
book for a present, but does not find it worth the 
money, can have it as a present.” 

On these terms the Bibles were distributed, 
and the next thing was to try and get them to 
read them. 

“ Open the books at the first chapter,” said 
Van. “ This first book is called Genesis, because 
it tells about the beginnings of all things. It is 
a book full of very curious and interesting sto- 
ries, and I wish that to-day and during the week 
you would read as much of it as you can, and see 
which of the stories you think the most interest- 
ing, and let me know next Sunday. I am a little 
curious to know whether any three of you will 
prefer the same story. There are some of the 
chapters which you had better skip, for they are 
merely lists of hard names, and if you went to 
work on them it might make you sick of the 
whole book. Just make a note to skip the fifth, 
tenth, eleventh, and twenty-sixth chapters at 
least, and perhaps some others. You are to read 


THE DAY OF REST. 


197 

this time for the sake of getting interested ; and 
the book of beginnings is very interesting, as 
you will find.” 

‘'Tells of beginnings, does it?” said one, ey- 
ing the clean pages askance as if the book were 
some curious monster. “ Tells about the begin- 
ning of the world, I Ve heard say, and how all 
the things in it came.” 

“I wish, then,” said another, looking very 
knowing, “ that it could tell me which came first, 
a hen or an egg. Was there a hen that never 
came from an egg, or an egg that was never laid 
by a hen ?” 

“That is a very good question,” said Van 
with aplomb, “and the book answers it in the 
first and second chapters. Why do you not also 
ask whether there was a tree that never sprang 
from a seed, or a first seed that never grew on 
any plant?” 

“ Well, yes, I would like to know that too.” 

“ Then let us turn to the first chapter of Gen- 
esis and read round, and we shall find out, I 
think,” said Van. 

She had no learned information to give them, 
for she was not learned. She did not know how 
wonderfully that description of beginnings tal- 
lied with the latest discoveries of geology, and 
the Book and the rock-beds told the same tale of 
earth-building. She did not know that modern 


igS ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 

science announced as a discovery what the Book 
told long ago, that the sea was the first home of 
life, and creatures swarmed there before the 
land knew trace or step of living thing. She 
did not know that what geology has discovered 
as first forms of life were laid down as such 
thousands of years ago by Moses when he wrote. 
She could not understand the wonder of it, that 
the ancient Word had set the order so, of crea- 
tures of the sea and fiying creatures and reptiles 
and the mammals of the sea, and so on up the 
ascent of life to man — wonder that can only be 
unravelled by the fact of inspiration. Van had 
studied none of all this ; she had common sense 
and she studied the Book, and so it happened 
she and science arrived at the same goal. 

That first Sabbath she interested her class. 
They were all there the next Sabbath and had 
been reading the Book. She invited them to 
develop their sentiments, and they developed 
them roundly. 

I never knew before where the first folks 
came from, but it looks uncommon reasonable.” 

“ And I never knew, but I Ve often won- 
dered, how such a lot of sin got into this world, 
but now I see; it was the devil came a med- 
dling. Great pity that. I wonder, if the Lord 
is so powerful strong, he did n’t keep him out of 
that there garden.” 


THE DAY OF REST. 


199 


That garden fetched me,” said another. “ I 
used to be with a gardener myself, and that 
there is as handsome a piece of landscape work 
laid out as ever I ’d wish to see. Four rivers 
rambling round the whole of it, and fruits and 
flowers !” 

“ The part I liked best,” said another eagerly, 
now that the tide of speech flowed freely, “ was 
about that man Moses. That is finer than any 
dime novel I ever read. The idea of his being 
adopted by a queen ! And then when he kills 
his man and lights out and takes service at that 
Jethro’s sheep-ranch and marries his daughter, 
well, it just fits in like a fairy-tale. I couldn’t 
get my mind off of it. I meant to read in the 
beginnings, but I cast my eye along on the next 
book and lit on that spot about the way they 
served the babies ; and I ’ve got a kid of my 
own at home and it interested me, and I sat up 
three nights and read on till I ended Moses up. 
I say, mates, a hundred and twenty years old he 
was when he died, and just as good as new.” 

‘‘I don’t believe it,” said one of his mates 
with refreshing frankness. 

“ You ’d better believe it ; it 's so ; I read it,” 
said the champion of Moses. 

“ I never read a nicer bit than that about Jo- 
seph,” said the youngest of the class. “ It beat 
the Sunday papers hollow. The way he han- 


200 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


died his brothers was a caution, and they did n’t 
seem such a bad lot, after all.” 

“ I read that too, and it is good and no mis- 
take. And did you get to that place where the 
woman has two sons and she likes one of them 
best, and she takes t’other one’s good Sunday 
clothes that he ’d left in her care and uses them 
against him ? There s a pretty specimen of a 
mother for you ! I do n’t hold with having 
idivoxites in families.” 

Such was the class before which Van found 
herself placed as teacher each of these spring 
Sabbaths. Expectation of the Sabbath ordeal 
filled her with terror ; but, after all, the task of 
dealing with this blunt strength was more to 
her mind than contending with the morbid 
weakness of poor Nelly Ames. 

When the Sabbath-school hour had ended 
and she could take refuge in the family pew, 
generally happy in the consideration that a 
number of her class had accepted her invitation 
to attend service. Van felt as if some labor, 
mighty as that of Hercules, had been accom- 
plished. 

Perhaps it was from this Sunday morning 
strain on brain and nerves that sometimes on 
Sunday afternoon Van was given to brooding 
over her own general incompleteness and inef- 
ficiency. 


THE DAY OF REST. 


201 


Do n’t fret against yourself so, Van,” said 
Teddie ; it ’s all wrong. You should not give 
way to discouragement.” 

“ I should and I will,” retorted Van frac- 
tiously. '‘I have good example for it, let me 
tell you, Bible example. There was Job; he 
cursed the day when he was born ; Moses was 
all worn out with the behavior of the children 
of Israel, and asked the Lord to kill him out of 
hand ; Elijah got completely discouraged and 
went up and sat on Horeb ; Jonah thought it 
was better for him to die than to live, and so no 
doubt it was. John the Baptist in his dungeon 
began to wonder whether Christ was Messiah ; 
Paul in Corinth became so discouraged that it 
took an angel or a vision to encourage him. I 
do n’t live in the days of visions and such com- 
forts, and I can’t and wont be cheerful.” 

When Van reached such a point as this she 
generally ended with a laugh, which restored 
her good-humor. 

My Van,” said Teddie, “ you are well read 
in the Scriptures, and you bring forth out of 
your treasure things new and old ; but let me 
show you the other side of those pictures. Job 
lived to teach the world to ‘ count them happy 
which endure ;’ he became greatest of the men 
of the East and his house was full of treasures 
and children. Moses lived to be the world’s 


202 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


great lawgiver ; Elijah came down from Horeb 
to do God’s will and pass into glory without dy- 
ing ; Jonah lived to be ashamed of his petulance ; 
John the Baptist had this word of Christ passed 
on him, ‘ Among those born of women there is 
none greater than John the Baptist;’ Paul fin- 
ished his work in Corinth and learned to say, 
‘ None of these things move me.’ Listen to 
something I was reading to-day : ‘ Our lives are 
full of Marahs ; out of the thirsty desert we come 
and hope to find water, and it is bitter and we 
cannot drink it. But if we cry unto God he 
shows us Christ the Branch, the Branch of the 
tree of life, and by him even the waters of Ma- 
rah become healing fioods.’ As I read that I 
thought it was like the food the angel brought 
to Elijah, in the strength of which he went to 
Horeb, the mount of God. For us the thought 
may be so good that it will help us to get 
through the worries of the week and come in 
six days to another truce of God.” 

‘‘Yes,” said Myra, “ a week is not so very 
long, and we have only to live by the week or 
even by the day — ” 

“ Why do n’t you say by the hour ?” laughed 
Van. 

“I do; or by the minute, for that matter. 
What was it that Mr. Lowell quoted last prayer- 
meeting? something like 


THE DAY OF REST. 


203 


“ ‘ That which the hour creates, 

That can it use alone.’ 

I have been trying to get at the meaning of it 
ever since. I get a glimpse of it, that it is a 
help over hard places, a live-by-the-minute doc- 
trine.” 

One, two, three, and on to nine, the clock 
pealed out its strokes. Van rose. “ Myra, is the 
house locked up ? We cannot sit up late ; Ted 
has to start off early. Ted, our beautiful day is 
ended.” 

‘‘Well, we have had the good of it,” said 
Teddie, lighting a lamp, for they had been sit- 
ting in the dark, “ and next Sunday will bring 
another day of gold. . I read such a lovely name 
for Sabbath lately — Elim — where there were 
twelve wells of water, every hour a well. Good- 
night, girls !” 


204 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

UNCLE JAMES AND UNCLE DANIEL. 

“ Happy the man whose wish and care 
A few paternal acres bound, 

Content to breathe his native air 
On his own ground.” 

Myra was working away at mental arithme- 
tic and Van was working in the garden. Van 
pulled weeds, picked tomatoes, and thought ; she 
also had her problems. She went up to the open 
window by which Myra sat. “ It is of no use to 
look back,” said Van, setting her teeth; “we 
must look forward, we must work. All these 
things which we shall need for Teddie must be 
gotten within eighteen months. We will lay 
them up by degrees, and Teddie must do all her 
sewing herself and make what she has nice by 
nice work. Hereafter we must see that Teddie 
keeps every cent of her earnings for herself to 
supply her needs.” 

“ Much that will be,” said Myra, with con- 
tempt. “ In eighteen months she would only 
earn one hundred and forty-four dollars at the 
present rate ; and out of that you must take some 
twenty dollars for vacation-time. You will see 
how much will be left if she does n’t even buy a 


UNCLE JAMES AND UNCLE DANIEL. 20$ 

shoe in all that time. And who meanwhile will 
find her in shoes and hats? The child cannot 
go ragged. I don’t wonder Uncle Aaron died 
when he saw at a fiash all that was coming upon 
‘ Adam’s daughters.’ ” 

'‘We must all make a move; we must do 
something better,” said Van, who, being inexpe- 
rienced, was confident. “ Teddie will now be 
able to teach a school. To-morrow she is going 
to the School Superintendent’s examination, and 
I know she will get a good certificate for a year. 
The school at Barley Centre is vacant now ; the 
girl who had it last term has gone West. I 
know two of the trustees. I mean to go over to 
Uncle Daniel’s, borrow a horse and buggy, and 
drive over to the Centre this afternoon and ask 
if Teddie can have the school if she gets a cer- 
tificate. The salary is thirty-five dollars a month. 
Old Mrs. Clapp, who lives near the schoolhouse, 
boards the teacher for ten dollars a month, be- 
cause she needs some one in the house with her. 
Teddie can do her own washing, and do her 
sewing out of school-hours as she picks up mate- 
rial. That is a rich district, and they have 
school ten fiionths each year. That would give 
Teddie fifteen months’ teaching from next 
month out, which will bring her five hundred and 
seventy-five dollars of salary. Take out of that 
ten dollars a month for board and six dollars for 


2o6 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


current expenses, as shoes and clothes, and she 
will have, let us see, how much left?” 

“ Two hundred and seventy-five dollars,” 
cried Myra joyfully. “ Let us be real cautious 
and say two hundred and fifty. ■ She can do very 
well on that. Oh what a splendid idea ! I wish 
I had your head. Van !” 

“ Thanks. Headless, I suppose I should look 
like one of Bluebeard’s dear departed wives ! 
Yes, with thirty-five dollars a month for ten 
months in the year Teddie can save two hun- 
dred and fifty, and laying it out where she can 
get good bargains, and making up her goods as 
she has time, and putting in spare time in knit- 
ting and crocheting lace and making tatting and 
embroidery, she can have real pretty things, bless 
her!” 

“ Sounds so much like the calculations of the 
Maid with the Pail of Milk ’ which used to be 
in that old blue Webster’s Spelling-Book father 
and Uncle Aaron had studied ! or like the calcu- 
lations of the Turk — Hassan, was he ? — with the 
basket of glass, in our ‘ Arabian Nights ’ ! ” 

It will come out better than that, you see if 
it doesn’t,” said Van gayly. '‘I counted my 
chickens before they were hatched last spring, 
and they every one came as if made to order. 
Witness them over in that yard now. I ’m 
going to start for Uncle Daniel’s right off, so I 


UNCLE JAMES AND UNCLE DANIEL. 20 ^ 

can set out to Barley Centre as soon as dinner 
is over. 1 11 take little Nolly along with me to 
keep him out of Aunt Sara Ann’s way.” 

“ How I should like a drive !” yawned Myra ; 
“it is so warm. But I must stay here lest any 
one comes with fifty cents’ worth of sewing or 
mother gets back unexpectedly.” 

Night had fallen when one of Uncle Daniel’s 
boys, Daniel, Jr., brought Van home in the 
buggy. She had hardly touched the ground 
when Teddie and Myra had seized her, crying, 
“Van, what news ? Did you get the school ?” 

“ No, I did n’t want it. But Teddie is to have 
it sure, if she brings the certificate, as she will 
to-morrow. The trustee, Mr. Ball, said he had 
known father and Uncle Aaron well, and he 
would do anything in his power for one of 
Adam Milbury’s children.” 

“ You see righteous parents are an inherit- 
ance to their children,” said Teddie. “ I ’d rath- 
er have my father’s good name than a mint of 
money ! What else. Van — anything?” 

“ Yes, I went to see Mrs. Clapp and engaged 
board for you. She is a nice old lady, old friend 
of grandma’s, and says she will be glad not to 
be in the house with no one but the little work- 
boy she has taken to take care of the cow and 
the garden. She showed me the room. It is 
very neat and sunny and large enough, and it 


2o8 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


will be warm enough in winter, for the kitchen 
stove-pipe goes through it. She wants you to 
sit in the sitting-room with her and make your- 
self at home, and she has a real nice sewing- 
machine.” 

Teddie seized Myra in her arms and danced 
in and out of the two rooms of the ground-floor 
of the little brown house and down the path to 
the gate and back. After this excursion Myra 
said to the family autocrat, “ And what shall we 
do. Van — keep on here ?” 

“ No ; we get worse and worse off every day. 
This village is too small to give us working- 
room. We want that as much as a cobbler. 
Even if you get Mrs. Steele’s governess place 
we could n’t live.” 

“ She can’t get it,” said Teddie. “ Mrs. Steele 
means to send the children to the public-school 
next term.” 

“We must go to the city,” said Van with de- 
cision. “ I shall write to Uncle James to-morrow 
to ask him if he cannot find work for us.” 

“ Uncle Daniel will not like that plan one 
bit,” said Myra, admiring Van’s enterprise, and 
secretly longing greatly to try her fortunes in 
Philadelphia. 

“ I can’t help it if he does n’t like it,” said Van 
pugnaciously. “ Uncle Daniel has crotchets ; he 
is mad about farming and the safety and comfort 


UNCLE JAMES AND UNCLE DANIEL. 20g 

of a country life, and considers the city a den of 
wild beasts.” 

Now Uncle Daniel, while the kindest-hearted, 
most true and generous man in the world, was 
bluff and outspoken, looked rough and rustic in 
his red shirt and big boots and faded overalls. 
Also, at times. Uncle Daniel, who had a family 
of six exuberant boys to keep in order, was dic- 
tatorial. But when, five years before. Uncle 
James had visited them, he had had a smooth 
voice and a constant smile. He had called the 
nieces '' my love,” “ my dear,” “ my beauty.” 
He had worn fashionable clothes, kept his boots 
shiny, had shirt-studs, gold sleeve-buttons, a 
necktie with a pin in it. He had also been free 
in saying that as a bachelor he had no dearer re- 
lations than the Milbury maids, daughters of his 
step-sister Margaret, and he meant to leave 
them all his money. He “ hoped to be rich some 
day, and then the dear girls would have a pretty 
plum.” True, since Uncle Aaron died, and the 
three girls had had hard work not to be hungry. 
Uncle James had not offered them the least bit 
of a bite out of said plum. He rarely wrote, 
saying he hated letter-writing, but when he did 
write he addressed his lovely nieces ” and his 
dearest sister,” and remarked that he was most 
anxious for their welfare and was their devoted 
James Apsley.” True, the Milbury maids had 

14 


Adam’s Daughters. 


210 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


sense enough to know that words and deeds are 
two very different terms of the equation of life, 
but they believed Uncle James was unencum- 
bered and flourishing, and would be reasonably 
helpful to them, and get them easy and well-paid 
work, in which undoubtedly the city abounded. 

Van wrote her letter. Teddie passed a very 
good examination and was promised the Barley 
Centre school, which would open the twenty-first 
of September. A week after Van wrote to Un- 
cle James she had his answer in her hands. It 
did not make her particularly jubilant, but she 
was in no wise shaken in her resolve to go to 
the city fortune-seeking. However a move could 
not be made without consulting Uncle Daniel, 
their nearest friend and relation. With some 
trepidation she went to the farm. 

Uncle Daniel was in the sitting-room talking 
with a gentleman who had just moved into the 
neighborhood as purchaser of a fine stock-farm 
about four miles from the Milbury property. 

Van chatted with Aunt Sara Ann and waited, 
but her courage oozed swiftly, and Mr. Benjamin 
detected her casting anxious glances at the big 
farmer. 

“ I fear I am in the way of conversation Miss 
Milbury wishes to have with you,” he said 
shrewdly. ^ 

'‘Oh, no,” said Van, bracing her courage for 


UNCLE JAMES AND UNCLE DANIEL. 21 1 

a hasty revelation. I only came to tell uncle 
we thought of going to the city, and wanted to 
talk with him about it. We cannot make a liv- 
ing in the country.” 

Do n’t go to the city,” said Mr. Benjamin 
fervently. “ It is the very worst and most hope- 
less place in the world for women without for- 
tune, a paying occupation, or friends — ” 

“ But we have an uncle there to go to,” ex- 
claimed Van. 

Ah, well, if he can take care of you — ” 

**We can take care of ourselves,” said Van 
haughtily. 

Mr. Benjamin was rebuffed. Uncle Daniel 
lost all his interest in long-horns and short-horns, 
Jersey and Alderney, and the pedigree of horses. 
Mr. Benjamin divined that another day would 
be more favorable for getting information and 
buying calves and colts. 

“ What ’s all this ?” demanded Uncle Daniel, 
when he had seen Mr. Benjamin to the gate and 
returned to the sitting-room. 

Uncle,” said Van in her most wheedling 
way, getting by his elbow, you know that Wal- 
lace Cranshaw has gone West to make a home 
for Teddie, and in less than two years hopes to 
come back and get her.” 

He ’ll do it too — he is the right kind of a 
man, Cranshaw ; I like him.” 


212 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ Oh yes, we all do ! And Teddie, you know, 
has been studying very hard, and got a year’s 
good certificate at the examination, and is to 
have the school at Barley Centre, with thirty-five 
dollars a month. She will not spend over six- 
teen dollars, and she is to keep all the balance 
so that she will be able to buy her a nice outfit 
when she goes away West.” 

“ Very good. Better and better,” said Uncle 
Daniel. “I do n’t see but what you are getting 
on very well. Are n’t you satisfied, child ?” 

“No,” said Van. “ What is not so well, un- 
cle, is that during this last year we have really 
not made our expenses. We have been using 
up all the clothes we had on hand and all the 
food stores we brought from the farm. We 
have worked our best, and saved every cent we 
could, and we are out of money. And, now, if 
we have not Teddie to pay the rent, we shall be 
worse off than ever ; you can see that.” 

Uncle Daniel whistled and then groaned. 
“ Why did n’t you tell me ?” 

“We would n’t tell now, if telling meant fall- 
ing back on you as a burden. You are burdened 
enough. We find we simply cannot make a liv- 
ing here. Mother is nearly broken down. She 
must give up nursing, and we must take care of 
her, and we are going to the city where we can 
do it.” 


UNCLE JAMES AND UNCLE DANIEL. 21 3 

“ The remedy is worse than the disease,” said 
Uncle Daniel. “ The city is the worst possible 
place for you, utterly dangerous and hopeless.” 

“You talk as if God lived in the country and 
never had anything to do with the city,” said 
Van in a vexed tone. 

“ I talk as if when God made people he put 
them in a garden to dress it and keep it ; . he set 
them to get their living from the ground.” 

“ But, uncle, perhaps that was because two 
people would not make much of a city,” sug- 
gested Van. 

“ And the first city was built by Cain, who 
killed his brother ; it was a murderer’s refuge,” 
said Uncle Daniel, who taught a Sabbath-school 
class, and was well up in Biblical information, 
and particularly strong in prayer-meeting. 

“ I hope the city has some good and moral 
people in it and a few Christians for its many 
churches,” said Van, “ for we are determined to 
go to Uncle James.” 

“ Has he agreed to do anything for you ?” 
demanded Uncle Daniel. 

“Well, not very much,” admitted Van re- 
luctantly. “ Perhaps that is all the better, so we 
shall not be disappointed. He has already said 
we are to have all his property, and to look to 
him if we need anything. He wont let us want, 
of course.” 


214 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ He is only your mother’s step - brother ! 
What after all does he care for any of you? 
Your blood is not in his veins, as it is in 
mine.” 

“But there’s family, feeling and gratitude. 
Uncle / Aaron lent him money and gave him 
money when he was in difficulties, and so did 
father. Now is the time to make return for it. 
No doubt he feels that, and will do well by us. 
You can read his letter ; here it is.” 

Uncle Daniel read the letter of Uncle James 
and avowed that he did not think much of it. 
“ Uere ’s a pretty uncle,” he said, “ and pretty 
family feeling, and a pretty amount of grati- 
tude ! If he was half a man he ’d offer you a 
home and the place of daughters ! He can give 
you work in his establishment ! Van can bring 
her sewing-machine, set it up in his work-room, 
and have constant well-paid employment ! He 
don’t say how much. And Myra can run his 
knitting-machine in like manner. Also, as you 
are his nieces, he will not confine you too closely 
to machines, but you shall have rest and change 
of occupation by helping in the salesroom and 
with letters and accounts. He can tell you of 
plenty of places where you can find three rooms 
to keep house in, and you ’d better bring furni- 
ture enough for so many. Freight will cost lit- 
tle. Now I do n’t call that a nice letter. There ’s 


UNCLE JAMES AND UNCLE DANIEL. 21 5 

something in it that I don’t like. I don’t like 
any of it.” 

‘‘I’m sure he means well,” asserted Van, 
against her inner consciousness. 

“ The idea !” cried Uncle Daniel, “ of turning 
a feeble widow woman and two young country 
girls off by themselves to live in part of a cheap 
house in a strange city. Why do n’t he take a 
house and let your mother keep it, and make a 
home like a man, and have you work at home, 
not in a shop ! You can stand in a hot, draughty, 
public store ! You can sit in close, dark, stuffy 
rooms, among a lot of ill-bred girls ! Folly !” 

“ But we must have bread,” said Van, “ and, 
as you say, he is not a real blood uncle. And he 
may be poorer than we fancy.” 

“ Since it is settled there is no use of my pro- 
testing,” said Uncle Daniel, shaking his head in 
a doleful way. “No use to say a word, mother 
and Sara Ann. I only wish these girls and Mar- 
garet will not wish themselves back in no time.” 
Then expansively, “ And if you do, come ! Van, 
remember it, this house — all we have — our hearts 
are open and ready for you all. Come any 
time !” 

This generosity made tears gather in Van’s 
eyes, and Uncle Daniel showed nobly in com- 
parison with Uncle James. But then. Uncle 
James might be better than his letter. 


2i6 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


However Van went home secretly uneasy and 
discontent. She found her mother lying on the 
lounge. Mrs. Milbury nad had to leave her 
place before her three weeks of nursing had 
been finished. She was worn out and had had a 
chill. Myra was petting her, bathing her head, 
and feeding her some beef-tea. 

“ I see I must give up the nursing or I ’ll not 
only be on your hands for a support, but an 
invalid in the bargain,” the mother said despond- 
ently. “I do n’t know what we can do but go to 
James. James never seemed very free-hearted, 
but then we are all the family he has, and he is 
past middle age and may be lonely, poor man ! 
Of course Daniel objects.” 

“Objections which don’t include a more 
promising way of getting a living do n’t count,” 
said Van. “ Teddie will leave on the twentieth, 
and we ’d better be off by the thirtieth. A 
change will help you, mammy. Do n’t you fret ; 
we ’ll take care of you.” 

“ Had n’t you better go to-morrow and talk 
over the plan with Mr. Lowell ? He has lived in 
the city, and has been very kind to us,” suggested 
Mrs. Milbury. 

Next day Van took Uncle James’ letter — not 
that she was very proud of it — and went to the 
parsonage, where she bluntly unfolded her plan 
to Mr. and Mrs. Lowell, who were more than 


UNCLE JAMES AND UNCLE DANIEL. 21/ 

ever interested in the Milbnry maids now that 
the youngest was to marry Mrs. Lowell’s brother, 
Wallace Cranshaw. 

“ My dear young lady,” said Mr. Lowell, read- 
ing the letter, and looking earnestly at Van, I 
fear you are making a great mistake. The letter 
seems to offer you unlimited work and offers 
with it no fixed pay. The pay will not be in 
home and support, for it seems you are to set 
up — in a very narrow way — for yourselves. I 
have lived in the city, and it seems to me that 
your chances of health, comfort, respectability, 
success, are better by far here in the country, 
among old friends, in the midst of your own 
church people, than they will be in the city. 
Here you are respected for what you are in your- 
selves, and are not judged by what you wear or 
by the work you do. In the city a shabby hat, a 
worn dress, a mean home, will stamp you and 
cause you to be neglected by those who if they 
knew you, might be really proud of your friend- 
ship. A thousand stings and humiliations will 
wait you in the city which here. you never knew. 
Does the city seem to you. Van, a centre of in- 
terest, of opportunity, riches, glitter, entertain- 
ment ? That is only the brilliant surface. You, 
by your poverty and daily toil, will sink below 
that surface and find black and bitter depths. ** 

“ But we shall always have our uncle to pro- 


2I8 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


tect US, and we shall always be women able to 
respect ourselves and hold our own,” .said Van 
proudly and flushing. 

“ If you knew the city — as I know it — you 
would dread it accordingly. Oh how much sor- 
row, how much secret, hidden sorrow, how much 
reserved, proud, agonizing want, move about in 
the city ! The cruelest poverty is of those too 
proud to complain, used to better days. We 
notice in the city the ease and splendor, the hap- 
py homes ; we see on the other hand the foul 
dens full of loud-voiced vice. Between these 
extremes we do not see respectability, decency, 
wrapped in its last-saved garments, sensitive 
souls who walk in daily martyrdom as over red- 
hot ploughshares, want pressing them, terror of 
pauperism, known, public pauperism, before 
them — behind the biting, blinding memory of 
better days.” 

Van heard this and trembled. She had never 
heard Mr. Lowell speak more warmly even in 
the pulpit. His words seemed almost like a 
prophecy of coming miseries, when she and 
Myra and their mother should be of those sensi- 
tive souls, shrinking, reticent, concealing their 
.sorrow as a crime ! She trembled ; and yet the 
prospect of casting her life into the whirling and 
scintillating vortex, the distant city, fascinated 
her as the snake charms the bird. 


UNCLE JAMES AND UNCLE DANIEL. 2ig 

While Mr. Lowell warned her of the city, he 
offered no assured livelihood at home, and if the 
Milbury maids must be destitute and desperate 
they preferred it should be where none of the 
old friends should know. They were emphatic- 
ally of those sensitive souls Mr. Lowell had de- 
picted. 

Van went home heartsick, but would not tell 
her mother what Mr. Lowell had said. “ He is 
sorry we are going, wishes we would not. But 
he knows of nothing here,” she said. “ Evident- 
ly to go is all that we can do.” 

With a feeling of homesickness and despair 
she listened to Teddie gayly planning how her 
sisters would thrive in the city, how mammy 
would rest and revive, and what she herself 
should buy when she had saved up some money. 

They are headstrong girls, Sara Ann,” said 
Uncle Daniel to his wife. “ If they can’t make a 
living, why don’t they come here? We should 
make them welcome. I declare, I wash my 
hands of them.” 

Part of his fashion of washing his hands of 
them was to fill three barrels with potatoes, 
apples, turnips, beets, butter, lard, and pork, and 
other products of his farm, and ship them to the 
city, so that they should be there when the girls 
and their mother reached their abode. Then 
the boys ” aided their cousins to dismantle their 


220 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


home and start off to the city the furniture for 
three rooms. The camphor chest went to Uncle 
Daniel’s, the rest of their possessions were sold 
to get money for their tickets to Philadelphia. 

That evening when he went home, after see- 
ing his sister-in-law and nieces start for the city, 
was one of the most unhappy of Uncle Daniel’s 
life. These girls had grown up at his knees ; he 
had had no daughters and they had been as 
daughters to him. And now they would not 
share his home, they rejected his counsels, they 
cast themselves upon the good offices of Uncle 
James, a man whom Uncle Daniel despised and 
distrusted. At first Uncle Daniel had been an- 
gry, now he was sad. 

“ That Apsley do n’t make any pretensions to 
religion,” he said, “ and I ’ve found in this world 
that such goodness and morals as are not built 
on religion are pretty poor stuff. I feel as if the 
girls had forsaken their own mercies, going off 
from their early home. And dear knows how 
we have prayed for them.” 

“ And those prayers will be answered,” said 
grandma. “ God is more interested in Adam’s 
girls than we are. They are children of the 
covenant, cast upon God from their first breath. 
Perhaps God sees that they need some particular 
kind of training that they can’t get here, and he 
is taking them away to get it. He will allure 


UNCLE JAMES AND UNCLE DANIEL. 221 

them and lead them into a wilderness and there 
‘ speak comfortably to them,’ and ^ give them 
their vineyards from thence, and the valley of 
Achor for a door of hope.’ Seems to you he ’s 
leading them a roundabout way, but you may be 
sure he ’s leading them home. Christian in the 
^ Progress ’ found his way to glory lying straight 
through Vanity Fair. Be sure every prayer for 
our girls will be abundantly answered in God’s 
time, and God’s time is right time.” 


222 APAM’S daughters. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE CHIVALRY OF UNCLE JAMES. 

“ Blow, blow, thou winter wind. 

Thou art not so unkind 
As man’s ingratitude: 

Thy tooth is not so keen 
Because thou art not seen. 

Although thy breath is rude.” 

Do n’t be doleful on this breaking up of 
our family,” said Van to Teddie. “ I suppose it 
had to come some time, and as long as the Lord 
sends it, no doubt there is a needs be and a good 
reason in it. Time will not seem long while 
you are busy. Only ten months ! And in vaca- 
tion you will go to Uncle Daniel’s. Mother will 
go there too, and you will be together for seven 
weeks.” 

With this prospect Teddie with some forti- 
tude tore herself away from her family. Van’s 
misgivings were greater, but she did not express 
them ; a stout mien she must maintain. 

They set out for Philadelphia in a night- 
train, but could not afford to take a sleeper. 
Uncle Daniel put them aboard, and was very 
lugubrious. 


THE CHIVALRY OF UNCLE JAMES. 223 

“ If I did n’t feel that there was a good God 
over all, pledged to look after widows and fa- 
therless children, I don’t know but I’d break 
right down,” he said, as he looked at these three 
simple souls going out to exile. “But city or 
country, you can’t get out of God’s keeping. 
And though you will be out of reach of my 
hands you wont be out of reach of my prayers, 
and make up your mind there ’ll be plenty of 
them, plenty of them.” 

Off whizzed the cars into the darkness, and 
Van was amazed to find how hard it had been 
to part from Uncle Daniel, and how forlorn 
and helpless she felt without him. But then 
there was Uncle James; soon he might seem as 
near and dear as Uncle Daniel. 

Mrs. Milbury and her two daughters reached 
Philadelphia after a night of travel. The city 
in the raw foggy early morning looked as un- 
kempt and unpleasing as some frowsy maid who 
rises too late, cross and sleepy, and neglects to 
put on a clean apron, collar, or do her back hair 
“until high noon.” The smell of cheap break- 
fasts from cheap restaurants pervaded the air ; 
the pavements were littered with bits of paper, 
orange and banana skins, and peanut shells. 

Paris, rising early, makes, its trim toilet by 
grace of a well-ordered army of street-cleaners, 
and, fresh and well washed, greets the sunrise. 


224 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

American cities have instead the fashions of the 
sloven maid above broadly hinted at. 

These cities tolerate and maintain a vast army 
of idlers and ragged ruffians whom Paris would 
put into tidy uniforms, furnish with shovel, 
broom, and a share in a barrow, and set to work 
in the cause of health, beauty, order, and public 
safety. 

The thick air, the uncleanliness, the confu- 
sion about the station, sent deep heart-sickness 
through the three weary and worried country- 
women. A friendly face, a hearty hand-shake, 
a familiar voice, would have brought comfort 
and the home feeling, and they looked eagerly 
around for Uncle James. But no known counte- 
nance was seen, and after some search they con- 
cluded that Uncle James had failed to meet 
them. Not that he had promised to be there ; 
he had carefully refrained from promising any- 
thing; promises did not seem to be in James 
Apsley’s line. But he had known just when they 
were coming, and judging uncles by Uncle Dan- 
iel, they expected him as a matter of course. 
Uncle Daniel would have been there, ready 
with a greeting, with well-laid plans, and with 
a means of conveyance for them and their be- 
longings, and also with a breakfast in readiness. 
Well, there are varieties in the genus uncle. 

As they were abandoned to themselves, Van 


THE CHIVALRY OF UNCLE JAMES. 22$ 

took the party to the nearest decent eating-house 
and ordered a fairly good meal. She was ap- 
palled at the price of a breakfast. The simple 
country dainties, fresh eggs, milk, fruit, seemed 
so dear in the city and so poor ! Still they were 
near Uncle James, near a fortunate life, near 
plenty of easy, well-paid work, in fact, on the 
threshold of Utopia. What need to mourn over 
this breakfast inroad on the slender purse ? 
Would not the purse be immediately replenished ? 
After breakfast Van said if Myra would bear 
the tired mother company at the station she her- 
self would find her way to Uncle James’. She 
had never been in so large a city before, and 
the noisy, unfamiliar streets daunted her. But 
by inquiring her way along the city of method, 
she finally found Uncle James’ establishment, a 
gentleman’s furnishing and ready-made cloth- 
ing store.” 

At first the niece and uncle did not recog- 
nize each other. In the five years Van had 
passed from young girlhood into early woman- 
hood, and a year of sorrow and care had so- 
bered her. For her part she was just making 
in her mind condemnatory remarks anent a 
chief clerk who rudely scolded a pale work-girl, 
when she discovered that the objectionable clerk 
was the proprieter of the place, no other than 
Uncle James himself ! He was a little balder, a 
^5 


Adani'8 Daughters. 


226 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


little grayer, a little more wrinkled and shrivek 
led, a little less spick-and-span tidy than when 
he visited Poplar Rise. She stifled her inner 
voice of chiding and made herself known to 
him. 

“ Oh ! Van? Yes. I had quite forgotten you 
were coming to-day. I have so much on my 
hands. Are you all well ? When did you reach 
the city ? Have you settled yourselves ?” 

“ Settled, uncle !” cried Van blankly. “ We 
have not the least idea where to go. We 
reached here this morning, at six. We hoped 
you would be at the depot to take us somewhere, 
and mother and Myra are waiting at the depot 
while I find you. Have you thought of a place 
for us? Have you engaged rooms for us ?” 

“ I ? Bless me, child, I have hardly time to 
eat my meals ! I am busy. How robust you 
look! Down at the d^pot, did you say? Well, 
I suppose I must run over there and speak to 
them.” 

‘‘ But mother cannot sit there all day, Uncle 
James,” said Van indignantly. “ She is not well. 
She is very tired. Do you not know of some 
boarding-house where we can go until we get 
rooms ?” 

‘‘Dear, dear ! How helpless you are. Van, for 
a full-grown woman I” 

“ But I am only a child as to city ways and 


THE CHIVALRY OF UNCLE JAMES. 22; 

localities, uncle. Cannot we go and board where 
you do, for say one week 

Oh, no ! no ! Only gentlemen are received 
there. But I have it ! There is a place on Cher- 
ry Street that will do, and I have so little time 
to help you to look. But we ’ll run round a bit 
for rooms at once. Where ’s the ‘ Ledger ’? I ’ll 
look at the advertisements of rooms for light 
housekeeping as we go.” 

Uncle James turned to get his hat, lock up 
the cash drawer, and give orders to a clerk. 
Van waited, wonderfully cast down. 

Van did not know that some centuries ago 
Froissart had written in his “ Chronicles ” what 
would well apply to Uncle James : “ He was 
but a small gentylman, and that well shewed 
after ; for a very gentylman will never set his 
mind on so evil an intent.” 

Still his speech had not been unkind, though 
careless. Van, who from doing battle for bread 
was becoming observing in some things, re- 
marked that he did not offer to provide for their 
stay at the cheap boarding-house whither he pres- 
ently escorted them. The board seemed very 
high to the country-bred girl, and telling Uncle 
James that their finances were very low, she said 
she must procure rooms and move at once. 

“ By all means, and then you will have 
nothing to take you from your work when you 


228 


ADAM S DAUGHTERS. 


begin. I ’ll point out some places to you.” At 
the second or third place the astute landlady 
asked, 

“ And 'wiW you be responsible for the rent, sir ?” 

“The rent! Oh my, no!” said Uncle James 
airily. “ What do you want security for ? They 
will earn enough to pay their way ; they are 
honest country people. And there will be their 
furniture ; that will be security enough.” 

Van’s eyes opened a little wider at this con- 
versation, and so did her understanding. When 
they reached the street she said, “ See here, 
uncle, we must get a home at once, for the price 
asked at that Cherry Street house where mother 
and Myra are sitting is quite too high for our 
pocket. We have not money enough to pay for 
a fortnight’s stay there, and what we have we 
need to pay our freight-bill and moving expenses. 
We must not take rooms so dear that our furni- 
ture is likely to be seized for rent before we can 
pay. What have we but that little furniture ?” 

“ Dear me !” said Uncle James, “ are you so 
bad off as that?” 

“ You know we are. What do you suppose we 
left our dear home and came to the city for, if 
not that we are ruined and must begin our life 
over again ?” 

“ Mighty bad business that, your uncle Aaron 
going security ! I would not do it for any one, 


THE CHIVALRY OF UNCLE JAMES. 229 

not for wife or child if I had them, which I 
have n't — and so much the better for you some 
day — eh, niece ?” 

“ What I think about is how to get on now." 

I suppose so. Couldn’t you find your way 
about alone, child ? I '11 give you the ' Ledger.’ 
You can make your way to these places, can’t 
you ? I am so busy. Perhaps, after all, it was a 
poor move for you to come to the city. You re- 
member I never suggested it." 

“ It is too late to discuss that," said Van, burn- 
ing with rage. “We are here and we must find 
a shelter for our heads. Uncle, we are very 
poor ; we must get a cheap place, or we shall get 
in debt for rent ; it must be decent and safe ; we 
are three lonely women ; it must be within walk- 
ing distance of your store if we are to work there ; 
we cannot pay for rides." 

“ Quite right ! quite right," sung out Uncle 
James briskly. “You show yourself quite a busi- 
ness woman, my dear. I see you are well able 
to carry out this matter alone. Now I have 
given you the paper and shown you the streets 
a little, and explained the manner of numbering, 
and I must leave you to attend to my business. 
Let me hear how you get on ; good-by, my dear !" 

Van stood alone in the street. The clock 
struck nine. The life of the city was in full 
distracting swing about her. She wondered if 


230 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


that landladly’s word about security had alarmed 
Uncle James. She reeled under the horror of 
her disappointment. But she had Myra and the 
mother to battle for. She must bear up. Her 
heart rose in a wordless cry to God to show her 
the way, to bring her to a safe home, to protect 
her in that terrible Babel. 

For two hours she followed out “ Ledger ” 
advertisments, but none of them suited her. At 
last she noticed a piece of paper pinned at the 
corner of a house, at the entrance of a quiet, de- 
cent, shabby, very shabby ''No Thoroughfare^ In 
a cramped hand was written. Three rooms to 
LET, UNFURNISHED, AT NO. 8, BY “ NaNCY TeM- 
PEST.” 

The worn-out, heart-heavy Van repaired to 
No. 8. Nancy Tempest was elderly, clean, shab- 
by, keen-eyed, hard of voice. The rooms were 
clean, small, oh so poor and shabby ! A little 
dim back kitchen, never lit by the sun, a small 
sitting-room, and a bed-room almost as gloomy — 
these were the rooms. 

“ Is there a church near T asked Van. “ Our 
mother is not strong, and we should wish to go 
to church.” 

“ What church do you go to ?” asked Nancy 
Tempest. 

“ The Presbyterian.” 

“ So do I. And your ’re from the country you 


THE CHIVALRY OF UNCLE JAMES. 23 1 

say ? I was raised in Berks County. I ’m clear 
wore out with men lodgers getting in all hours 
of the night, and me setting up for ’em. I ’ll 
be glad to have women in these rooms. 
There ’ll be just that many less to sit up for. 
And then I must rent to some one who can 
furnish. I had a spell of sickness, and had to 
give up the furniture out of these rooms for rent. 
Yes, there is a church near. When did you leave 
the country?” 

“ Last night,” said Van. It seemed as if it 
must be a year ! 

“ Deary me !” said Nancy Tempest in a voice 
out of which the freshness and laughter had 
perished years ago, but which yet retained some 
sympathetic chords inwoven in its very struc- 
ture. 

“ I was once young and just from the coun- 
try ! I wish I ’d never left it. It was a hard 
move for me. It is for most poor folks. Well, if 
you want these rooms, my dear, you may have 
them.” 

Van wanted to be safe about the rent, and she 
saw that her landlady was poor. She paid for 
two months in advance, and said she would like 
to come in at once. It was twelve o’clock, could 
they get in that day ? 

Nancy Tempest’s heart opened to her new 
lodger more and more. “ My dear,” she said, 


232 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

“ let me advise you a bit, for I know this cruel 
place. I will go with you into the court and hire 
black Jerry’s big van ; he ’ll bring all your goods 
for a dollar, seeing it is me. And as it is the 
first of October, and coal is cheaper than it 
will be, you had better, if you can manage it, lay 
in two tons. Perhaps you can get along through 
the winter on that, if so be you burn only one 
fire. From this out the coal will rise every week. 
There ’s a separate coal-shed you can have just 
by your kitchen door.” 

Poor, plain, peremptory was Nancy Tempest, 
yet Van felt drawn to her, ready to take shelter 
under her experience. It was so comforting to 
find a Christian woman in that noisy, strange 
city, the unchristian side of which had been so 
badly revealed to her by Uncle James. On the 
common ground of their membership in Christ 
she and Nancy Tempest, strangers half an hour 
ago, had come into intimacy. Van realized as 
never before the bonds of Christian communion, 
of brotherhood in Christ. In Him who sticketh 
closer than a brother there is a tie nearer than 
that of blood. She looked at Nancy Tempest 
with earnest, confiding eyes that touched the 
lonely elderly woman’s heart. 

Van had already begun to be full of alarm and 
to feel her courage departing. A sudden meek- 
ness to advice came upon her. She delivered 


THE CHIVALRY OF UNCLE JAMES. 233 

herself over to the direction of Nancy Tempest. 
She went out with her, hired Jerry, gave him 
her freight-bill, and sent him for the goods. 

“Jerry will be honest; you could trust him 
with a fortune. He is a right honest old man,” 
said Nancy Tempest. 

The next move was to order the coal, and 
then some kindling-wood of a cheaper kind than 
the bundles sold at the grocery store. Van 
then went for her mother and Myra and took 
them to the new rooms, explaining her need of 
removal to the landlady in Cherry^ Street. That 
astute dame had read care and poverty in their 
faces, was civil and in a manner kind, but very 
glad to get rid of them. Arrived at Aspen 
Square — grand name for the dismal little no 
thoroughfare^ name given in behalf of one nearly 
dead aspen-tree which for years had shivered 
over the doleful fortunes of the neighborhood — 
they found Jerry and Nancy Tempest unloading 
the big luggage wagon. Nancy continued to 
help them with such good-will that by ten o’clock 
that night they were pretty well settled, and too 
tired to sleep until the clock had sounded three. 
In the morning they woke late, had the break- 
fast to help prepare, took to Nancy Tempest 
some of the nice fresh butter, vegetables, and 
home-cured meat that Uncle Daniel had given 
them, and at nine appeared before Uncle James. 


234 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“You are late, my dears,” said Uncle James 
blandly, “ but of course that wont occur again. 
You’ll be here by seven. I expect you to be 
models to the entire establishment, models of 
industry and cheerfulness and punctuality. Van, 
where is the sewing-machine? You know you 
were to run your own machine. Much better for 
you too; mine are all too heavy for you. You 
should have had the carman bring the machine 
here, not to your rooms. It will now put me to 
the trouble and expense of sending for it. But 
we ’ll say no more of that. What ’s your address ? 
8 Aspen Square ? Sounds quite stylish. I ’ll 
send for the machine. Is this Myra ? I thought 
Myra was the pretty one, with yellow curls and 
blue eyes — a very pretty girl. Where is the 
pretty one ?” 

“ She is Teddie — Theodora ” said Van. “ You 
know I wrote you she is engaged to be married, 
and she has taken a school and is to stay in the 
country. I told you Myra was to come with 
me.” 

“ I will do very well to run a knitting-ma- 
chine, if I am not pretty, uncle,” said Myra dryly. 

“ Humph !” said Uncle James sourly. “ I 
had meant to have you learn how to do the 
thing well and gracefully, and then have the 
machine set in the big plate-glass window and 
have you run it. I supposed you were the pretty 


THE CHIVALRY OF UNCLE JAMES. 23$ 

one, and there would have been a crowd at the 
window all the time, and custom brought into 
the store by it, too.” 

'' I ’m very glad,” said Myra shortly, “ that I 
am not pretty enough to be set to knitting in 
that big front window for the crowd to gaze at. 
And Teddie would n’t have done it either, uncle.” 

And there ’s the clerking in the store,” said 
Uncle James in an angered tone. “ I wanted 
the pretty one to help clerk.” 

If we are civil, and know prices and where to 
find the goods, that will be enough,” said Myra 
stoutly. “ Good looks are not a part of a clerk’s 
outfit.” 

“You have country ideas,” said Uncle James 
cynically. 

The sisters were as much disappointed in 
the “establishment” kept by their uncle as in 
the uncle himself. The stand was only third or 
fourth rate ; shoddy, flash, sordidness, greed 
characterized the entire place. The girls who 
worked in the second-story room were tawdry, 
noisy, bold, poor-looking. Van noticed that 
every one of them seemed dissatisfied, and com- 
mented freely on Uncle James, his appearance, 
principles, manners, and ways. Two young men 
down stairs, clerking, were pert, glib liars, and 
conspicuously given to paste jewelry, gawdy neck- 
ties, bear’s grease, and peppermint lozenges. 


236 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


At first Van and Myra, as nieces of the pro- 
prietor, were looked upon as spies, and openly 
spoken of as “the favorites” and “the pets.” 
Uncle Janies favored this opinion ; his underlings 
might be more dutiful if they supposed that some 
among them sided with the employer and would 
make reports to him of all that happened. More- 
over the plain dress, quiet manners, gentle soft 
voices of Van and Myra marked them out as 
strangers in the work-room, strangers to its man- 
ners and its morals. The sisters were like “ the 
speckled bird ” of the prophet, and these other 
girls made themselves assiduously disagreeable 
to them, picking at them, teasing them with ques- 
tions, mocking them. Did they go to the the- 
atre? Had they never a young man to take 
them out in the evening for an oyster supper ? 
Why did they dress in fashions forty years old ? 
They must have been unpopular, if they never 
had found any one to give them a ring or a 
locket or a bracelet ! Did n’t go to the park or 
a concert-hall or the beer-garden on Sunday ! 
What did they do? Go to church ! Well, of all 
things ! Did they come out of the ark ? and 
there was a roar of laughter. 

Van and Myra were made of metal that could 
stand this fashion of attack bravely. 

“ Poor souls,” said Van, “ they have never 
had the least chance in life. They do n’t know 


THE CHIVALRY OF UNCLE JAMES. 237 

what it is to be happy and well behaved. I 
mean to make them like me, and do them some 
good too, before I ’ve done with them. It will 
be a pity, Myra, if our miseries cannot bring 
good to some one.” 

So there was always the quiet good morn- 
ing” and “good evening,” “Is your cold bet- 
ter?” “I hope your head doesn’t ache to-day,” 
from the sisters to their fellow work-women. 

“ Let me thread your machine - needle for 
youw hen it needs it,” said Myra to one girl. 
“Your eyes are weak; mine are as strong as a 
hawk’s.” 

“ There, now,” said Van, sprinkling water on 
the face of a fainting girl, and making a bed of 
shawls for her on the floor, “ lie there and rest 
a couple of hours. I ’ll do my day’s work and 
finish out yours. I can make a machine whizz 
when I choose.” 

“If the old man catches you doing other folk’s 
work he ’ll blow you sky high,” volunteered one 

girl. 

“ Let him,” said Van ; “ I ’m not the least bit 
afraid of him.” 

“ I suppose he ’d not turn you off as he would 
us,” said another. 

“ If he did I ’d trust God for another place,” 
said Van reverently. 

The girls looked at each other. The name 


238 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


of God was not known here except as in pro- 
fanity. 

“You ’ve cut this muslin on the sleeve, and 
must pay for the shirt!” cried Uncle James 
angrily in the work-room, one day. 

“ Indeed, sir, it was cut when I got it. I 
showed it to Ann. Didn’t I, Ann? Oh do 
speak ! Indeed, sir, my week’s wages half gone 
in the shirt 1 Oh, I can’t ; I shall starve !” 

“ Don’t be so careless, then. You’ll pay for 
the shirt,” said Uncle James. Up rose Van. 
Ann had not dared speak. Van spoke. “ Uncle, 
I saw that sleeve when she unfolded the work. 
The cut was in it. I noticed particularly.” 

“ And I,” said Myra, looking the wretch in 
the eye, “ saw when the cut was made by acci- 
dent, down in the shop, where I was clerking.” 


NANCY TEMPEST, AT YOUR SERVICE. 239 


CHAPTER XV. 

NANCY TEMPEST, AT YOUR SERVICE. 

“ Be to her faults a little blind, 

Be to her virtues very kind.” 

From seven in the morning until six at 
night, with a begrudged half-hour to eat the 
small luncheon brought with them. Van and her 
sister toiled for Uncle James. He had said he 
“ must take care for their health,” and he told 
them change of occupation was rest ! Having 
given them the rest of change, he made them 
work hard indeed. Myra, who wrote an admi- 
rable script, was kept copying and answering 
letters and making out bills at the desk in a lit- 
tle dingy corner lit by yellow gas until even her 
strong eyes ached. Both the sisters were called 
upon to clerk behind the counter. “ My cus- 
tomers much prefer to buy their gloves, shirts, 
and ties from a lady,” said Uncle James. “ Why 
are you girls so reluctant to clerk in the store ? 
I told you before you came that I should expect 
it.” 

Those two horrid fellows you keep there 
for clerks,” burst forth the girls, “ are impudent 
to us. They use profane language before us. 


240 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


They will pull us by the elbow or touch us on the 
shoulder when they want to call our attention.” 
“ One of them called me Van !” “ One of them 

called me said the sisters. “We will not 

go into the store unless you make them behave.” 

“ The cubs ! I ’ll learn ’em,” .said Uncle 
James. “ Clerks are plenty. I could get any 
amount of chaps for five dollars a week.” 

“ Dear me,” said Van to Myra, “ only five dol- 
lars a week to pay for clothes, board, washing ! 
I do n’t wonder they are cheating and tricky 
and mean every way. It is pretty hard to be 
very virtuous when one is very poor, I suppose.” 

“Don’t you get cynical,” said Myra; “re- 
member Teddie’s song, ^ God is the God of the 
poor.’ ” 

But though Uncle James proceeded to keep 
his clerks in order, he merely laughed and scoffed 
when his nieces took umbrage at the manners 
of their customers. “ I wont stand it,” said Van 
indignantly, “to have those odious men with 
their breath foul with beer and tobacco, men 
whose names I do n’t know, say to me, ‘ How 
much are these gloves, my dear?’ ‘You pick 
out my tie for me ; I shall like it much better,’ 
and then hang around to talk after their parcels 
are made up. I wont answer them. I wont clerk. 
I ’d rather sew till I dropped.” 

“You are the most high-and-mighty pair 


NANCY TEMPEST, AT YOUR SERVICE. 241 

of girls I ever saw,” growled Uncle James. 
“ What harm can these trifles do you ?” 

“ Well, I wont fit on their gloves for them,” 
said Myra. “ I just say I do n’t know a thing 
about gloves.” 

“ I suppose you ’d prefer to find other work, 
or starve,” sneered Uncle James. 

“ I ’ve got one uncle that would n’t let me 
starve !” crid Myra, her heart yearning for Uncle 
Daniel’s honest strength. 

‘‘ And he would not allow us to be overworked 
and insulted so, either,” said Van ; “ he is a man, 
a Christian man.” 

“ Well, I do n’t make any pretences to Chris- 
tianity,” sneered Uncle James. 

“ If righteousness exalte th a nation, so it does 
an individual,” said Van, and you ’d be a thou- 
sand times more honorable, agreeable, useful, and 
happy if you not only made pretences to Chris- 
tianity but had it. You could do good in this 
store and not evil. It makes my blood boil with 
anger. Uncle James, to see the bad example 
you set and the bad passions you raise in your 
work-people. Wha twill you answer for these 
people when God takes account of you ?” 

‘‘Get to your work and cease your preach- 
ing,” said Uncle James. 

And all this mortification and fatigue came to 
so little ! The mother did all the work at their 
16 


Adam’s Daughters. 


242 ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 

rooms, even the washing. It was over-much 
for her, and she pined and failed in the loneliness 
and lack of sunshine and fresh air. The daugh- 
ters had made their mother’s health and comfort 
a main reason for coming to the city, and what 
they had brought her to was far worse than 
what she had left. And then the money mat- 
ters. The first Saturday night when the other 
employes received their wages not a cent was 
given to Van and Myra. 

“ Probably it is because we have not worked 
a week,” said Van; “we began on Wednesday. 
Next Saturday it will be all right.” Next Sat- 
urday it was the same way. The clerk came 
through the work-room paying wages, taking 
receipts in the week wage-book, taxing for bro- 
ken machine-needles, flaws in garments, late 
arrival ; in fact, instituting a series of petty per- 
secutions ; but not a hint of money to Van and 
Myra. 

The girls accordingly went to Uncle James. 

“What money! Nonsense! What in the 
world do you want money for ? You have your 
rent paid, your fuel laid in, all those provisions 
which Uncle Daniel gave you. You are well 
off.” 

“ We have just one dollar in cash,” said Van, 
“ and of course we are not working for amuse- 
ment, but for money, and we want it.” 


NANCY TEMPEST, AT YOUR SERVICE. 243 

“ Tut, tut ; it will be wasted by you. As long 
as it is in my pocket it is perfectly safe. I ’m 
a good banker for you, my dear.” 

“A little too safe,” retorted Myra, who had 
taken a dislike to Uncle James, and whose dis- 
like showed itself clearly in her tone and looks. 

“ We are not children, Uncle James,” said Van 
firmly. “We work for you as we would for a 
stranger, and you treat us as you do strangers. 
We wish to be paid as you pay strangers, our 
weekly wages.” 

“Yes, yes,” said Uncle James cheerfully, “ but 
be easy on me. I had a large bill of rent to 
meet yesterday, and I am short. I cannot spare 
much to-night. Here are three dollars now.” 

Three dollars for ten days’ hard work for 
two ! 

The next Saturday they were again left to go 
and demand their money. When they went to 
his desk he continued writing. At last Van 
interrupted him. “ Uncle ! We must have our 
money.” 

“ Why, girls !” cried Uncle James, looking up 
as if just realizing their presence. “ I am getting 
deep in your debt. You ’ll be rich when I pay 
up all arrears. I am short again, but it is only 
because of the season. It is the middle of Octo- 
ber, and I 'm finishing buying my fall goods. 
I always buy for cash. I can buy cheaper, but 


244 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

some weeks it nearly cleans me out. How is 
your dear mother ? Give her my love. I ’ll call 
on her some day.” 

“ Our dear mother needs better fare and more 
sunshine, and we want our wages so she can 
have what she needs,” spoke up Myra. “ How 
much do you mean to pay us, uncle 

“ We-11-11,” drawled Uncle James, “ beginners 
don’t usually get very much of anything, but 
I want to be liberal to j/ou. Van runs a machine 
tolerably well. I ’m disappointed that the pretty 
one did not come ; but, well I mean to be liberal 
to you. You shall have four dollars a week each 
when you work full time.” 

Four dollars !” said the girls blankly. 

Yes. That is very large wages. Two and a 
half or three would be the most any one else 
would give you. But I ’ll pay four.” 

“ I suppose we cannot help ourselves,” said 
Van mournfully. 

And two weeks and a half for each one of us 
at four dollars a week , that will be twenty dol- 
lars,” said Myra. “ And you have paid us three. 
Will you give us the seventeen, please, uncle?” 

‘‘ Eh, seventeen ? Why I do n’t expect to pay 
anything for that first part of a week ; you were 
learning the ropes then. And the four is only 
from this out. I think two and a half each for 
those other two weeks will be ample. You’ll 


NANCY TEMPEST, AT YOUR SERVICE. 245 

have to trust me a little for that. I owe you, it 
seems, seven dollars, but I am short, as I said. 
I can only spare four dollars to-night. Of course 
I must pay those other girls, for they have no 
homes, and no mothers and uncles to fall back 
on.” 

Thus it was regularly, two, three, one, five ; 
those would be the sums paid on wages to the 
two, and they must buy shoes, groceries, milk, 
kindling — so many things. 

The girls grew pale and listless, what with 
overwork, bad air, lack of sunlight and good 
cheer, and over-much worry. They grew too 
tired during the day even to be lively and merry 
in the evenings. 

Sunday they went to church with Nancy 
Tempest, but they felt so shabby and discouraged 
that they were glad to slip into a back seat in 
the gallery and get out of church as fast as they 
could, before the leisurely, well-dressed crowd 
came from the aisles. 

The pastor in his regular visitation of his 
flock called on Nancy Tempest and she told him 
about her lodgers. Unluckily Mrs. Milbury was 
out buying their few groceries, and missed the 
call. But the minister remembered to tell his 
wife about the strangers from the country, 
and one day she went to “No. 8 Aspen Square.” 
That day Mrs. Milbury was lying in bed nearly 


246 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

frantic with a violent headache. She could not 
see any one nor endure a word nor a ray of 
light. The lady left her good wishes and her 
sympathy, but as in both their calls none of the 
Milburys had been seen, very naturally they 
were for the time forgotten. 

The congregation maintained a Bible-woman 
and a deaconess who might have found the 
Milburys had they lived elsewhere. But Nan- 
cy Tempest, good soul, was endowed with an 
irascible temper which volleyed forth against 
transgressors for whom she had no affection. 
The Bible-woman unluckily gave Nancy “A 
Word to the Unconverted,” urging her to read 
it. 

Read it !” shouted poor Nancy, throwing it 
down. “ As if I have n’t sat at the same commun- 
ion table as you this three years, and in the same 
seat with you more than once, and am always 
at prayer-meeting. And here you do n’t know 
it ! Pretty Christian sister you !” 

The unhappy Bible-woman wanted to apol- 
ogize and explain, but poor Nancy was nervous 
and cross, and drove her out with declarations 
of permanent hostility. Of course she repented 
that night even with tears, but the Bible-woman 
knew nothing of that, and dared not return to 
No. 8 Aspen Square. 

The deaconess and Nancy also had a falling 


NANCY TEMPEST, AT YOUR SERVICE. 247 

out. They met in the same sick-room and dis- 
agreed about a poultice. The deaconess was 
amiable, Nancy was imperative, and avowed that 
she could not see any sense in deaconesses any 
way, and their church was unlike any other 
church, in the city in having such an order, and 
she did n’t want any meddlers about her.” Very 
naturally the deaconess was not a frequent vis- 
itor at Nancy’s house. 

These idiosyncrasies of their landlady shut 
the Milburys from the acquaintance of their 
church people. 

One comfort to the girls and their mother was 
that Teddie knew nothing of all their troubles. 
They wrote her a weekly letter, and she wrote 
to them every Saturday. Her letters were bright 
and happy and loving. She liked her school so 
much. Wallace wrote such splendid letters. 
Wallace was doing so well ; he was arranging to 
build a little house ; he had bought some land 
Mrs. Clapp was so kind. She herself was very 
saving and very industrious, and a young lady 
living near her was teaching her to make ever so 
many kinds of fancy-work and trimmings. She 
was piecing a silk quilt and a table-cover and a 
sofa-pillow. Her pupils brought her quantities 
of pretty pieces. She had three lovely patterns 
for aprons. She sent ten dollars for them to buy 
her some goods to send back by one of the Bar- 


248 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


ley Centre people, who called for it at Uncle 
James’ store. They were to be sure to keep one 
dollar to buy something for mother. 

The girls cried over the dollar, and made 
mother take four rides to the park and eat beef- 
steak bought by the poor little dollar. In return 
they wrote of how busy they were ; how quickly 
they had got settled, how fine the weather was ; 
so many interesting sights in the city ; such a 
good preacher ; coal laid in ; rent paid in advance ; 
such a kind landlady ! 

That last item was the most solidly true of 
all their reports. No one could be kinder than 
Nancy Tempest was to them. Nancy from the 
first had taken her lodgers, especially Myra, to her 
heart. Every washing-day she came in to help 
Mrs. Milbury, though her own washing was not 
only for herself but for the up-stairs lodgers and 
their rooms. She would bring Mrs. Milbury 
into^the front room, where for an hour or two 
each day the sun entered, and placing her in the 
old rocking-chair in the sunshine, would proceed 
to entertain her. True, Nancy was rather de- 
pressing company ; the world had treated her but 
hardly, and she knew it and was bitter over it. 
All that she had to say of her neighbors or those 
with whom she had come in contact was either 
commiserating or condemnatory. Sorely pressed 
by poverty, lonely, living for years with no one 


NANCY TEMPEST, AT YOUR SERVICE. 249 

Upon whom her really warm, true heart could 
lavish its affections, poor Nancy had grown tart 
and hard. Many were her secret charities, 
many her self-denials. Strong was her faith, 
and she had in some directions reached rare 
depths of spiritual knowledge ; but owing to the 
misfortunes of her lot her nature had been 
warped and dwarfed, as a tree deprived of sun- 
shine, set in arid rocky soil, and pressed by 
walls and buttresses of granite. I know,” 
she said to Mrs. Milbury, that I am not the 
kind of Christian I ought to be. I mourn over 
it. I am hot-tempered and too quick of speech. 
A Christian should be cheerful and gracious 
like the dear Lord was. I know it. I mean to 
be it, and then — I fail, oh how I fail !” 

She occupied all her spare minutes making 
button-holes for tailors, and her fingers me- 
chanically flew over the strong silk stitches on 
vests, coats or tronsers, as with iron-bowed spec- 
tacles on her hooked nose she worked, and her 
tongue flew as fast as her needle. Doleful tales 

she told of Mrs. B , whose husband had 

deserted her ; widow D , whose son had disap- 

peared, and who daily waited with heart-sick 

longing for one who never came ; Mrs. A , 

who had gone crazy ; Miss E , who had lost 

all her family and friends ; Miss T , who had 

been taken to the poorhouse ; the G family. 


250 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


who had all gone to ruin ; the H household, 

who had been impoverished by a sharper. 

Nancy was a constant reader of newspapers. 
Now newspaper and periodical reading is to the 
reading of books as gossip is to conversation. 
The person whose reading is papers and maga- 
zines picks up varied information, but of a scrap- 
py desultory character, and the mind remains in- 
capable of sustained lines of thought, as the 
gossip who deals in the small information of the 
neighborhood and the minuitse of personalities 
becomes incapable of sustained and valuable 
converse. Nancy read the papers, a little after 
date as she picked them up in her lodgers’ rooms, 
and she rehearsed their canards, their details of 
robberies, murders, suicides, accidents,with a mor- 
bid relish. “ It ’s awful what a wicked world we 
live in, Mrs. Milbury,” Nancy would say. “ Folks 
a’n’t moral and kind-hearted like they was when 
I was a girl, an’ lived in the country. Nobody ’s 
happy, nobody ’s to be trusted, these days. That 
Uncle James your girls are working for is a terri- 
ble skinflint. I read rascal in his eye. Just to 
see what he was made of I dropped in there for 
button -holes. If he was n’t worse than a Jew I 
wouldn’t say so. Fact is, when I’ve worked 
for Jews they treated me best of any folks I ever 
did work for. Not lavish, but honorable, reg’lar, 
and civil.” 


NANCY TEMPEST, AT YOUR SERVICE. 25 1 

Sometimes the Milburys talked softly togeth- 
er of their misgivings about Uncle James, and 
admitted coming to the city had been a terrible 
mistake ; but now they had no money to go back 
home with. Perhaps something would turn up 
better. At all events it was so good that one of 
the Milbury maids was happy and comfortable. 
Dear Teddie was set free of the family miseries. 
Her day of love was not darkened by the shadow 
of Uncle James, his shop, and the city. They 
never told Teddie that Uncle James never visited 
them, never helped them, paid them almost no 
wages. They never said how the city fell as a 
blight on the three strays from the country. 

I wish I could tell you of even anything 
better,” said Nancy, “but here I am, with scarce 
a whole gown to my name, and worn to a frazzle 
wrestling with lodgers and button-holes. I ’d 
give half of whatever life is left me if I could get 
back to the country and take you along with me. 
All my folks are dead, and seems like you were 
nearer to me than any one else in the world. I 
never took to folks as I did to you from the 
first time I laid eyes on you. Well, if I don’t 
help you ’ta’n’t cause I don’t try.” 

“You do help us. Miss Nancy,” said Myra, 
putting her arm about Miss Tempest and patting 
her shoulder. “Haven’t you arranged for us 
all to sit together evenings, and so saved us half 


252 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

the light and fuel we would have to use ? Do n’t 
you save us nearly all our fire, having mother 
sit in here with you and cook her dinner on your 
stove ? Do n’t you tell us where to get things the 
cheapest, and how to buy economically? We’d 
never get on without you.” 

Nancy Tempest liked this. She was lonely 
and longed for affection, and Myra was demon- 
strative and caressed her, and respectful and 
called her “ Miss Nancy.” The lodgers and 
neighbors usually called Miss Tempest “ the old 
gal.” She hated that. One Sunday she brought 
Myra a silk handkerchief. “ I want you to wear 
it to church,” she said. “ It will look mighty nifty 
on you, but it do n’t become my age nor yellow 
skin. A lodger gave it to me once ; he was a 
real well brought up young fellow ; used to tell 
me about his mother. He gave me that when 
he left. He got a good place on a paper in 
Boston. Deserved it, too. You keep that hand- 
kerchief, child.” Miss Nancy had another gift 
from a lodger, a big dark picture in a rather 
handsome old-fashioned gilt frame. It hung 
on the wall of the sitting-room, and Miss Nancy 
was proud of it. “ It looks rather stylish some- 
how,” she would say. “ Not that I set much on 
the picture. It is black and ugly ; you can’t see 
very much of it only that horse’s head. I ’ve 
thought I ’d like to be able to buy some of those 


NANCY TEMPEST, VT YOUR SERVICE. 253 

nice bright chomos you can get all framed for 
two dollars, but I ve never been rich enough. 
Now they look like something, and set off your 
walls. This picture I value for the lodger that 
gave it to me. Ten years ago it was he died in 
this very house. Five years he ’d been here, a 
very quiet, nice Englishman, trying to invent a 
perpetual motion machine, and I ’m told that 's a 
thing that can’t be done. He ’d say to me, ‘ Miss 
Tempest, if I could invent my perpetual motion 
machine, and discover how to square a circle, I ’d 
know what I was born into this world for.’ 
And I says to him, ‘ La, Mr. Dotter, as to squar- 
ing a circle, all you have to do, if it a’n’t too stiff,’ 
I says,’ is to press the side flat and pinch out the 
corners, and there you have it. But what you 
came into this world for,’ I says,’ is, according to 
the catechism, ^‘to glorify God, and enjoy Him 
for ever see you do it, Mr. Hotter.’ And when 
he ’d get low, and mourn over bein’ of no use in 
the world, I ’d say to him, ‘ It is written, “ What 
doth thy God require of thee, but to deal justly, 
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
God?” Be content with fillin’ that bill,’ I says 
to him. Well, he fell into consumption and 
finally died. I took care of him to the last. He 
gave me thirty dollars to buy his coffin and get 
the hearse and see him buried in the free part 
of the graveyard. He told me to give old Jerry 


254 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


his clothes, and he gave me that big print Bi- 
ble with long s’s in it and Apocrypha ! It had 
been his mother’s. And he says to me, ‘ Miss 
Nancy, I ’ve nothing to pay you nor to give you 
but my hearty thanks and that old picture that 
belonged to my grandfather and he thought 
much of. I have no relatives, so you keep the 
picture to remember me. And I have asked 
God to reward you, as he has said, “Cast thy 
bread upon the waters, and thou shalt find it 
after many days.’ ” I have n’t found it yet,” 
Miss Nancy would add. “ I ’ve been in such 
tight places that once I tried to pawn the pic- 
ture to old Spillman. He offered to cut out 
the canvas and buy the frame, but that seemed 
sort of desecration, an’ I d6 n’t hanker to part 
with it, so through thick and thin there it 
hangs.” 

When the girls came home from the shop 
Thanksgiving Eve, they found at No. 8 a box 
from Uncle Daniel by express. They eagerly 
broke it open. There were riches from grandma 
and Aunt Sara Ann — a roast turkey, two mince- 
pies, dried fruit, two loaves of bread, dough- 
nuts, cookies, a paper box of eggs packed in 
corn-meal, five pounds of butter, a jar of pickles, 
a bottle of jelly, some home-made cheese, a 
ham, stockings and mitts of grandma’s knitting, 
cracked nuts and pop-corn from the small boys. 


NANCY TEMPEST, AT YOUR SERVICE. 255 

That box made high festival. Myra rushed 
off for Miss Nancy to come and see, and invi- 
ted her to not only Thanksgiving dinner but 
Thanksgiving breakfast with them. Real coun- 
try eating. Miss Nancy !” 

‘‘ We ’ll have the meals in my room then,” 
said Miss Nancy, “ and use my stove and fire ; 
we ’ve more sun and space there. Well, if this 
a’ n’t a treat ! I have n’t been asked to a party for 
years.” 

Miss Tempest did honor to the occasion by put- 
ting on her best clothes — best, but poor enough — 
telling again the story of Mr. Dotter, his aims in 
life, disappointment, and death, and rehearsing 
all the terrible stories contained in the papers of 
the last week and the sorrows that had marked 
Thanksgiving-times in days gone by. 

But they all made a good breakfast, went to 
church, took a walk, and ate a royal dinner at 
three o’clock. 

Sit by,” Miss Nancy said, taking the lead, 
when the table was spread and the provisions all 
ready. When offered anything which she chose 
not to take, she bowed ceremoniously, saying 
with elaboration, “Thank you, I don’t use.” 
When urged to take more turkey, after refusing, 
she remarked, “ Well, I wont be strenuous about 
it ; if I must I must.” When the evening was 
half gone, Myra popped an ear of corn and but- 


256 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


tered the snowy grains, and they set forth the 
nuts the boys had cracked, and some lady-ap- 
ples; and as they feasted Miss Tempest re- 
galed them with several harrowing murder 
stories and told of the death of her most inti- 
mate friends. 


gentlemen’s furnishing. 


257 


CHAPTER XVI. 

“gentlemen’s furnishing and ready made.” 

“ Give thou me my share, with every other, 

Till down my staff I lay, 

And from this world away 
Wend to another.” 

“ What did you do yesterday ?” This was the 
question which in the work-room of Uncle James 
passed from one to another curiously, listlessly. 
Only Van and Myra looked and felt as if the holi- 
day had been a source of any satisfaction to them. 
“ What did you do ?” asked Van of the palest and 
most quiet girl in the shop, Delia, a girl who 
seemed unfortunate and unhappy rather than 
hard. Van pitied her and often tried to cheer 
her with a little chat as they worked. But it was 
hard to talk, -with six machines whirring and 
some of the girls quarrelling, some singing, some 
whistling. “What did you do, Delia?” 

“ I went to the Dime Museum as soon as it 
opened in the morning.” 

“Why, how queer! What was there that 
you wanted to see ?” 

“ Nothing. You did n’t suppose I wanted to 
see anything, did you ?” 


Adam’s Daughters. 


17 


258 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


I supposed that was what people went there 
for,” said Van. 

‘‘ Much you know,” said Delia tartly. I 
don’t know how you are living, but I know I 
share a garret with a girl that I don’t like, 
and our garret has no fire and no sun in it. 
I have n’t a place where I can find a comfort- 
able seat, a ray of sun, and a decent fire. If I 
had I ’d have planted myself in it and rested all 
day long. As I had n’t I tried to make our room 
decent. Crane never will sweep or make a bed. 
She has a restaurant to wait tables in, so she was 
off, and I did up the rooms as well as I could. 
Then I put on the best I had, and that is pretty 
poor, I can tell you, and I took fifteen cents, and 
with five I bought a banana for two cents and 
two stale biscuits, pretty big ones, for three cents. 
I paid my ten cents to get into the museum, and 
then I was where I had a dry, warm place to stay. 
As I was early I could get a seat. I took one in 
an out-of-the-way corner. I have been there be- 
fore, I did n’t care to see things, and I hadn’t 
money for side-shows. I liked the band music 
pretty well, and I got a chair to see the play 
morning and afternoon. I watched the crowds. 
I had my banana, a biscuit, and a drink of water 
for dinner. I slept in my seat two or three hours. 
I ate the other biscuit and had a drink of water 
for tea, and at half past seven I went home and 


“ GENTLEMEN’S FURNISHING.” 259 

went to bed. I had a horrid day ; all my days 
are horrid. I wish I was dead !” 

Van had been feeling herself the poorest 
person on earth, but here was a depth of poverty 
of which she had had no idea. How cheerful 
and homelike looked No. 8 Aspen Square with 
mother and Miss Nancy in the foreground and 
with Uncle Daniel, Teddie, and the others in 
the background ! How warm Miss Nancy’s kitch- 
en, how luxurious their yesterday dinner ! And 
what a forlorn time this wretched Delia had had ! 
Van had felt herself entirely too poor to be able 
to help any one, but she saw that even she had- 
had opportunities and had neglected them. If 
she had asked Delia to spend Thanksgiving with 
her, oh ! that would have been a way to give 
thanks, “ to draw out her soul to the hungry.” 
How little they would have missed Delia’s din- 
ner portion ! What a life-long good it might 
have been to her to see honest, brave Miss Nan- 
cy and the dear gentle Christian mother ! What 
an opportunity lost ! 

The stout-hearted Van did for Delia’s woes 
what she would not for her own, she bent her 
head over her and shed a big tear. Delia looked 
at her curiously. 

“ Did you hurt yourself ?” she asked. 

No,” said Van, “ I ’m sorry for you ; I did 
not dream you were so poor.” 


26 o 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“Well, I am,” said Delia, “but there, I feel 
better if any one cares.” 

“ I wish I ’d asked you to visit me,” said Van. 
“ But I can now. Mother wont have dinner to- 
day until we get home ; wish you ’d come with 
us and spend the evening. We shall have a real 
good dinner of what was left yesterday. Do 
come. Mother would be so nice to you.” 

“ I wonder if I could run round to my place 
at noon and get my other drevSS and neck-tie 
on,” said Delia eagerly. “ It is near.” 

“ I ’ll tell you,” said Van, “ I ’ll tell Uncle 
James that I am going to work for you fifteen 
minutes at noon, so you can have that much 
longer to go home.” 

There was a great clamor among the work- 
girls; a marriage was to be celebrated at a 
Roman-catholic church near by at noon, a fash- 
ionable marriage. They wished to go and see 
at least the entrance of the bride to the church ; 
perhaps they could crowd in and watch the 
ceremony. At noon they bolted from the work- 
room and dashed down stairs three steps at a 
time, screaming and shouting. Myra was eating 
her dinner at Uncle James’ desk, having told 
him of Van’s work for Delia. Van, alone in the 
work-room, ate a big sandwich made of Aunt 
Sara Ann’s bread and butter, and worked away 
on Delia’s machine. Were there any more op- 


“gentlemen’s furnishing.” 261 

portunities she had missed ? Was there any good 
Samaritan work left even for her in her disas- 
ters ? In every depth was there a lower depth ? 

The work-girls came tearing back. -High 
above the whizz of the machines rose their 
clamor. “ Did you see her dress ! White satin, 
and such elegant lace ! Oh she has had a chance 
in life ! I ’d give my head to be her.” 

“ I heard some one say he made all his money 
by gambling, and had been in several fights 
with knives and pistols.” 

“ Who cares ? I ’d marry anybody to have 
such a veil and white satin slippers, and nothing 
to do but eat and sleep.” 

“ I say, Anna, if you were rich what would 
you do?” 

“ Drive in the park and go to the theatre 
every night.” 

“ I ’d go to Atlantic City every summer.” 

“ I ’d rather be a great actress than marry a 
rich man.” 

“ If I had n’t lost my voice, I ’d sing at a 
music hall. Oh you needn’t laugh. I had a 
good voice when I was little, but I was hired 
out to a company to sing as a prodigy when I 
was seven years old ; and when I was twelve my 
voice was gone.” 

Then one of the girls began to detail all the 
scenes of a flash novel which she had been read- 


262 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


ing late at night when she should have been 
asleep. Another girl interrupted with a tale of 
having gone with six others in couples to a dance 
hall, and one of the girls had taken too much beer, 
and they could scarcely get her home. Witness, 
there she was sleeping over her machine now. 
“ If the old man finds her nap out, he ’ll dock 
her of her wages. He ’ll come creeping up in 
list slippers to spy on us in a minute.” 

The quick ears of Myra heard the door be- 
low open. She leaned over and gave the sleeper 
a great jerk. Mechanically the girl lifted her 
head and the treadle worked again as Uncle 
James came creeping in. 

“ That was mighty good of you,” said one of 
the girls to Myra, when he had gone. “You 
are n’t a spy if you are a prude and a prig.” 

“ I ’m sure,” said Myra to Van, “ that we are 
particularly unfortunate in our uncle and in the 
shop we work in. Other employers must be 
better than he is, give better wages, and hire a 
less rough set of girls. As for me, it is almost 
more than I can do not to hate him. Yesterday 
I gave a very short answer to a customer who 
said he ‘ wanted a pair of gloves the exact color 
of my bright eyes !’ And Uncle James had to 
sell him his gloves, for I left the shop. After- 
wards Uncle James called me down and said I 
was a fool, and that a girl as homely as I am 


“GENTLEMEN’S FURNISHING.” 263 

should be glad of any compliments! I wasn’t 
worth my wages, he said. Wages! I haven’t 
averaged two dollars and a half a week since I 
came here. And yet I run that miserable knit- 
ting-machine indefatigably. Oh if were back 
in the country !” 

“ All the hands seem to hate him,” said Van, 
•‘and for good cause.” 

Yes, they all hated him. He was a cruel task- 
master. Van inquired into it. All had the same 
story — small wages, irregularly paid, all man- 
ner of excuses for taxes and docking the miser- 
able stipend of each weary worker. “ He puts 
the shop clock ahead five minutes to shorten 
our noon-time.” “Keeps his clocks fast and 
docks us for being late in the morning.” “ Gives 
us poor thread and then counts the work poor 
because the thread has broken.” “ Rude words.” 
“ Hateful clerks.” “ Drive, drive drive, like a 
slave.” “Such cruel overwork.” 

“ Why do n’t you leave him, then ?” demanded 
Van. 

“ He owes me money, eight dollars, a fortune 
to me ; if I left I never should get it. Perhaps 
I never will as it is.” 

“ I ’ve heard something about a Woman’s 
Protective Society, or Industrial Union,” said 
Myra, “to take up such cases and make the 
men pay their work-women.” 


264 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“Wish I knew of such a society to put the 
screws on the old scoundrel for me !” cried Anna. 
“ I ’d fetch him.” 

“We couldn’t get recommends from him if 
we left,” said Delia, “ and might not get places 
without. The slack season will be here after 
a while and then work will be scarce every' 
where.” 

“ How about other shops and other employ- 
ers ?” asked Myra. 

“ It is all of a muchness, as you ’ll find out 
if you live in the city long enough,” said Kate. 
“ The one object of the masters is to screw out 
all the work they can get for the least wages.” 

“ Not if they are Christian men,” said Myra. 
“ Christian men bring Christ’s law of love into 
their business, and try to deal justly with their 
fellows as serving God in their trade as well as 
in church.” 

The girls burst into a loud, derisive laugh. 

“You think that is not so,” said Myra, “ but 
it is because you girls have kept yourselves out 
of the way of seeing true Christianity in its work 
in the world. Truly Christian men bring their 
piety into their business, and do unto others as 
they would be done unto. The Bible tells them 
that we are ‘ all brothers,’ and that he is ‘ bless- 
ed who considereth the poor.’ In the early days 
of the church, just after our Lord went to heaven, 


“ gentlemen’s furnishing.” 265 

130 man said that anything he had was his own ; 
but people had all things in common and every 
man sought not his own but his neighbors’ good.” 

“Yes,” cried Kate, “I wish those times would 
come back!” 

Softly Van began to sing, 

“ Brief life is here our portion, 

Brief sorrow, short-lived care ; 

The life that knows no ending. 

The deathless life, is there.” 

“We may admire,” says Froude, “ the confi- 
dence of that other age which expected every 
man to prefer the advantage of the community to 
his own ; when parliaments rebuked tradesmen 
for ‘ their greedy and covetous minds, as more 
regarding their own singular lucre and profit than 
the common weal of the realm.’ ” If ever there 
was such an age we do not know. The histo- 
rian may have seen it in the beautiful glamour 
cast by distance in either time or space. If 
ever such a time shall be hereafter, it will come 
because the kingdom of the Nazarene has been 
set up on the earth, and the nations have been 
brought into it, and love of Christ proves a free 
fountain of love to our fellows. 

Every day the debased character of Uncle 
James and the unhappy condition of the shop- 
girls grew upon Van’s mind. If their week-days 
were miserable, how sordid were their Sabbaths ! 


266 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


She heard of these Sabbaths from the girls who 
came in drowsy and weary after a Sabbath spent 
in a beer-garden or an excursion. They rose so 
early to make ready, for their garments always 
needed cleaning, mending, or altering. They 
purchased all that they called pleasure so dear, 
at cost of so much exhaustion and striving ! Cold, 
wind, mud, sleet, snow, smoke, these were the 
environment and atmosphere of their winter 
recreation Sabbaths. Did they visit the libraries, 
museums, galleries of pictures, which some claim 
should be open for the Sunday benefaction of the 
poor? Not they; the companions they knew, 
the clothes they wore, the tastes they had formed 
in their circumscribed lives, were below these 
levels. To go where they could shout and laugh 
and stare, and eat cheap dainties and bandy 
saucy words — this was their ideal of pleasure. 
Was it their fault or their misfortune ? Had 
any one ever offered them what was better? 
Van, felt sure that warmth, light, change, food, 
were the attractions to many of them, the en- 
tire reason perhaps of their entrance into this 
reckless life. If some one had provided a warm 
dry, sunny, cosey place, with lounges and rock- 
ing-chairs, books not too dull or difficult, black- 
board drawings, pictures, cheerful hymn-music, 
a place not too restrained and methodical and 
autocratic, how many of these girls might have 


'‘gentlemen’s furnishing.” 267 

risen by it to brighter things ! Long excur- 
sions to the parks, rides if they could find some 
one to take them, all these Sabbath occupations 
found them more exhausted at the end of the 
day of rest than at its beginning. Van and 
Myra were the only ones who seemed half alive 
on Monday morning. 

But after that evening spent with the Mil- 
burys Delia began to cling to Van and try to 
model herself after her. She dropped her slang, 
in which she was not like Anna naturally expert ; 
she was more neat about her hair and hands; 
she spoke more quietly, and again and again 
she spent the evening at No. 8. Not that they 
could often ask her to a meal ; even meals must 
be counted, they were so poor; but they had 
warmth and kindness, and managed to pop some 
of the cousins’ corn in Miss Nancy’s frying-pan, 
and poor Delia enjoyed it wonderfully. 

Van would have preferred the evenings alone 
with her mother, Myra, and Miss Nancy, but she 
could not resist the hungry, appealing eyes of 
Delia. This little hospitality was the one meth- 
od left her for doing service to God in humanity, 
and she would say, “ Come to us this evening, 
Delia,” and after a little they grew not to mind 
Delia’s presence, and she began to know as much 
about Teddie and Wallace and Uncle Daniel and 
Poplar Rise as the rest of them. The Milbury 


268 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


maids and their changeful fortunes were the 
most interesting romance that Delia had ever 
known. 

Miss Nancy Tempest took Delia into her 
friendship. Finding that Delia owned her mat- 
tress, a pair of comfortables, a washbowl, a pillow, 
and an old trunk, she told her she might move 
those things into a little lumber-room in the 
attic. Dry, unplastered, yet having the sun 
through a window in the roof, and with the back 
chimney passing through it, such was the room. 
“You can have it for nothing,” said Miss Nancy, 
“ and evenings you can sit by my fire and lamp. 
It is not much the Lord has left me that I can 
do for him, and I lay out to do what little I can.” 

Delia came to No. 8 as to paradise, and found 
no faiflt with her bed on the floor in the lum- 
ber-room. It was safe and clean, and much 
warmer and brighter then anything she had had 
for months. She insisted on paying her pence 
weekly for share in the fire and light, and was 
very thankful for a chance to wash her clothes in 
some of the suds left after Miss Tempest’s laun- 
dry work was over. “ It do n’t take much to 
content some people,” said Miss Nancy; “ depends 
altogether on the disposition. I ’d be contented 
with a cabin, three dollars a week, and six or 
eight square yards of grass in the country. 
But land of liberty! I’ll never be that rich. 


“gentlemen’s furnishing.” 269 

I reckon I ’ll die riglit here, or in the poorhouse, 
likely.” 

Delia even began to go to church with her 
hostess and the Milburys, although her shabby 
clothing almost deterred her. 

Van said so much about Sunday desecration 
that Delia made a vigorous effort to get right in 
that particular if in nothing else. The street- 
venders, the newspaper boys, the barber-shops 
and cigar-shops in full swing, outraged the 
religious sense of Van, the country girl. Going 
to church one Sunday morning, a little lad ran 
up to her, offering a few violets, and crying, 
“ Buy ’em, lady ! You looks kind, buy ’em.” 

“ I have n’t any money,” said Van, “ and if I 
had I shouldn’t buy the flowers on Sunday. 
Don’t you know it is wicked to sell flowers Sun- 
day?” 

“ Well, miss,” retorted the boy, “ if you don’t 
never do anything no worse nor to buy a boket 
of a Sunday from a poor fellow like me, you 
wont never do no great harm in this yere world, 
no you wont.” 

Van was so astounded by this string of neg- 
atives that she stood gazing speechless upon its 
originator. The boy continued, 

“ What do you take me for, miss ! For a rich 
vcove as goes about selling flowers for to get a 
little fun out of livin ’? Do you think as I ’ve 


2/0 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

breakfast of isters an’ boiled ham an* chicken an’ 
taters? You just bet I haven’t had a bit this 
morning, and a’n’t likely, along of no one 
wantin’ flowers.” 

“ Come back home with me,” said Van des- 
perately, “and I ’ll find something to fill you up 
if I go without my own dinner. You do look 
kind of hollow. Uncle Daniel’s boys look so 
different !” 

She left the others to go to church and took 
the boy back to No. 8. She heated the coffee 
left from breakfast, took a thick crust of bread 
and spread it with molasses and gave it to her 
guest. He ate with an eagerness that made his 
plea of hunger good. 

“You are a precious good un’,” said the boy, 
“ if you are of the pious kind. I knowed another 
of your sort once. She give me ten cents if I ’d 
go sit in church and not cut round with the vio- 
lets. I ’d sit in church any time for ten cents. 
All I want is the dime ; it does n’t make no dif- 
ference how I get it.” 

Van had no ten cents to offer as a bribe. She 
let the boy go his way. For herself she was 
late to church, and sat the sermon out thinking 
that “ something was rotten in the state of Den- 
mark.” 

“ It was a mistake our coming to the city,” 
said Myra to Van. “ All here is so different 


“ gentlemen’s furnishing.” 271 

from what we have been accustomed to, we 
were so used to sunlight and fresh air and quiet 
and neighborly ways, that the city is much 
harder on us than on those brought up here. 
At home I might have worked on until I could 
get Barley Centre School when Teddie married, 
and with that I could have helped you and mo- 
ther so well. This change is killing mother. 
She does not know how little money we get, 
but she suspects, and she lives in dread and 
anxiety.” 

“If we were in the country again where 
mother could work in a garden in pure air, I 
believe it would do her worlds of good,” said 
Van. “ Here she cannot do anything. That 
effort she made last week to go and nurse for 
three dollars a week is too much for her. She 
will be back Saturday nearly dead.” 

In fact she came home so sick that Nancy 
Tempest sent her to bed and nursed her for 
four days, while the girls were at the shop. 
Myra told Uncle James that his sister was sick. 

“ So?” said Uncle James. “ I ’m very sorry. 
Women that do nothing are apt to be sick. 
Nothing like hard work to keep folks well. 
You girls were terribly spoiled by that uncle 
Aaron of yours. He was one of those men 
who think their women-folks are made of wax 
and treat them accordingly.” 


272 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


Myra felt as if she would like to beat Uncle 
James with the heaviest yard-stick, or throw the 
stove poker at him. Uncle James succeeded in 
keeping his younger niece in a very unchristian 
frame of mind. 

Van presented him a bill with all the arrears 
of their weekly pay duly set down therein, and 
demanded a settlement. 

“Always wanting money!” cried Uncle 
James. “ I have more hands now than I need 
in these hard times. Trade has fallen to noth- 
ing. Why can’t you trust me a while? You 
ought to be the ones to help me on ; you ’ll have 
all my money when I ’m gone. Seeing hard 
times now, and learning how to save, will teach 
you money’s worth, so you wont be extravagant 
and wasteful when you come in for a plum. 
Money! money! Well, there are five dollars. 
Give me that bill. What do you know of ma- 
king out bills? You have wasted more material 
now by mistakes than all that comes to, only 
I ’ve been so easy on you, I never said a word 
about it.” 

“ I have n’t wasted a cent’s worth,” retorted 
Van. “ This claim of waste is extortion. You 
charged Delia thirty cents for a mistake on a 
shirt last week, and said you ’d have to sell it 
that much lower, and I saw you sell that very 
shirt for full price.” 


“ gentlemen’s furnishing.” 273 

“You’d better tell her,” sneered Uncle 
James. 

“What is the use when she cannot get 
away ?” said Van wearily. 

“ None of you can get away ; places are not 
so plenty,” chuckled Uncle James. “It is Hob- 
son’s choice ; my establishment or nothing.” 

“You are a wicked man,” said Van ; “you 
act as if there is no God who will measure to 
you as you measure to others. Why are you so 
greedy ? Why are you not contented to take a 
fair, honest portion of this world’s goods, serve 
God, and help humanity ?” 

“ Better go for a missionary,” said Uncle 
James ; “ you have gifts that way.” 


Adam’s Daughters. 


18 


274 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

IN WINTER BLASTS. 

“Far from the rustling of the poplar bough 
Which o’er my opening life wild music made, 

Far from the green hills with the healing glow 
Of flashing streams whereby my childhood played.” 

A NOISE of heavy feet and loud voices, with 
unceremonious use of the knocker, called Miss 
Nancy Tempest to the door of No. 8 Aspen 
Square about seven one evening. 

“A’n’t the Milbury girls living here? We 
want to see them,” said the leader of a group of 
five young women whom Miss Nancy admitted 
to the hall. 

“ They ’re in there,” said Miss Nancy, point- 
ing to the kitchen sitting-rocm, and big Anna 
led the way, crying, “ Halloa there. Van, you did 
not expect us, did you ? That you. My ? Well, 
Dele Evans, how ever did you come here ?” 

“ I lodge here now,” said Delia, as Van and 
Myra rose to meet their unexpected guests. 

This is our mother and this is Miss Tem- 
pest, our landlady,” said Van, introducing Anna, 
Kate, Sadie, Melvina, and the others. Then as 
Miss Nancy had but six chairs. Van and Myra 
hastened to their own rooms to bring others. 


IN WINTER BLASTS. 


275 


Big Anna was the speaker of the occasion. She 
seemed a little daunted by the quiet, the neat- 
ness, the homelikeness of Miss Nancy’s poor 
room, and by the ladylike mien of Mrs. Milbury 
in her black dress and widow’s cap. But Anna 
was not largely endowed with capacity for em- 
barrassment, and she presently burst forth, 
“ We a’n’t just out for fashionable calls. Van. 
You never invited us to make you a visit, but 
we’re out on business. That’s lawful, a’n’t it? 
When first you came to the shop we thought 
you were spies of the old man, but we find you ’re 
real bricks, you two girls, and you ’ve stood up 
for us time and again, and you get treated as 
bad as any of us, or worse , he pays you worse 
than he pays us. Now that is what we want to 
talk about. The old man’s shop a’n’t endurable 
any longer. If just one of us gets mad and 
breaks off, she may go ; ’t wont make any differ- 
ence to him. He can find another. If we all 
do something at once, we may scare him or we 
may be better able to get into other shops.” 

“And how about the other shops and em- 
ployers ?” asked Myra i “ are there many better 
ones ?” 

“ It ’s terrible anyway,” said Kate. “ I ’ve 
got a cousin in Boston who works for the great ■ 

B firm. She has to wear a nice dress and 

nice collar and cuffs and tie, and her wages are 


ADAM’S DAUCxHTERS. 


276 

SO small she has to have a room without fire or 
light, only a little tallow candle she buys for 
herself. Her underclothes are all in rags ; she 
can’t afford noon lunch , she is not able to get 
good shoes or rubbers, and her feet are wet and 
cold all winter.” 

“ It ’s so with more than half the shop-girls,” 
said Delia. “ Before I got sick with fever I 
worked for S , and they are called very lib- 

eral and have evening lecture courses and so on 
for the girls. But if we work from half-past 
seven in the morning till six at night, what time 
have we but evenings to make, mend, and wash 

our clothes ? Though the S s pay five and 

six dollars a week and so are more liberal than 
others, we cannot get board in a really decent 
place under four dollars a week, in the top sto- 
ries or hall bed-rooms with almost no heat. 
Our clothes, shoes, medicine, little extras, wash- 
ing, must all come out of a dollar and a half a 

week. The P firm is praised for giving all 

the clerks a Christmas present of five dollars, 
but the clerks in the holiday -time work forty 
extra hours, and that’s worth the five dollars 
and more too.” 

“ I ’ve got a friend,” said Anna, “ working • 

'for the C s. She gets three dollars a week 

the first year, four the next two years, five the 
next, and is liable to be turned off summers in 


IN WINTER BLASTS. 


277 


the slack season. She lives with her folks, and 
her ferry tickets are a dollar and ten cents a 

week. At the B s’ store five g'irls in the 

shoe department have died of lung fever or 
pneumonia or consumption in two winters, 
the draughts in that part of the store are so 
dangerous. But they ’re only work-girls ! Let 
them go to the hospital and the potter’s field. 
Who cares?” 

“ Here ’s another one going there, if she 
doesn’t look out,” said Kate, pointing to Sadie, 
who was coughing violently. “ Old Apsley owes 
her six dollars, and she has n’t a rubber to her 
feet and her shoes are all broken. Just you 
look at her feet ! sopped in this slush, and she 
coughing like that, and not a bit of fire to dry 
herself by She’s booked for the graveyard 
sure 

All eyes were directed to poor Sadie’s ragged 
feet. 

“ Why, you girl cried Miss Nancy, “ what 
a fix you ’re in ’ I never saw the like ’ Your 
feet are bare on the pavement ! Move right up 
to the stove and put your feet in the oven and 
dry ’em good, and all your draggled petticoats ! 
Now just wait a bit till I mix you up something 
for that cough and spread a piece of flannel 
with lard and pepper to put on your breast.” 

Miss Tempest was never better pleased than 


2/8 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


when she was nursing somebody who was amen- 
able to good counsel. 

Mrs. Milbury went to her room and returned 
with a pair of thick woollen stockings of grand- 
ma’s knitting. 

“ I can spare these,” she said ; “ put them 
right on, you poor child.” 

“ But, ma’am, thank you,” said Sadie, much 
subdued by the attention she received, “ as 
soon as I step out, all these nice stockings will 
be soaking wet without rubbers, ma’am.” 

“ Put on them stockings !” spoke out Miss 
Nancy with the imperativeness of pronouncing 
a ukase. ^‘As for rubbers, you can have a near- 
ly new pair of arctics. A lodger of mine left 
them last week, a young boy who got a chance 
to go to Cuba, where arctics a’n’t needed. They 
are too big for my girls, and you ’re welcome to 
them.” And Miss Nancy went down on her 
knees and ferreted out the arctics from her pot- 
closet. 

“If we could all get fixed out as prompt as 
that,” said big Anna, “ we ’d be well off. Talk- 
ing of the hard times shop-girls have in winter, 
they do n’t fare surprising better in summer. In 

the M s’ store there ’s eight girls working for 

dear life at four dollars a week, and expenses 
about five or six, and that work-room is so close 
and hot that two or three of the girls fainted 


IN WINTER BLASTS. 


279 

every day last summer; but there they work, 
risking their lives, and much the M s care.” 

'‘What idiots you two girls were to come 
from the country,” spoke up Melvina to the 
Milbury maids. “You were fat and rosy when 
you first came to the shop, and your clothes 
looked so nice. Now you are thin and fagged 
out and pale. Your clothes get shabbier. You 
are no better paid than the rest of us. I tell 
you hunger, illness, beggary, early death, are 
the lines laid out for most of us.” 

“ How about the dressmaking establish- 
ments?” asked Van. “Are they not better 
than the gentlemen’s furnishing places? As 
women keep them, I should think women would 
be better treated in them.” 

Her guests howled with derision. 

“ Just as bad ! The women are on the make 
as much as men, and just as bad screws. I did 
hear of one lady who set up to open a religious 
dressmaking place, and paid fair wages and fur- 
nished things, and gave the girls hot tea and 
bread and meat at noon, and did n’t pick and 
tax, went on the ‘ do as you ’d be done by ’ rule, 
and read ’em a chapter of the Bible every morn- 
ing, and asked ’em if they went to church Sun- 
days. Nice shop that was ; but she failed in a 
year. Had to close up and go out by the day 
herself.” 


28 o 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ Why see here !” cried Anna, “ most appren- 
tices to dressmaking get nothing the first year 
but a lunch of weak tea and dry bread. Glad to 
have a chance to learn, and the way they teach 
them is to keep one girl sewing on skirt braid, 
another pulling out bastings or overcasting in- 
side seams or putting in bones. Have to fur- 
nish your own needles and scissors, be sent out 
to carry work in all kinds of weather. Most of 
the sewing rooms are cold and dark. The missis 
and her forewoman must have the places by the 
windows, and then when missis sits down to 
sew she reaches out and borrows one girl’s scis- 
sors and another girl’s needles. Does n’t furnish 
her own.” 

“ But, I say,” called out Melvina, “ this is n’t 
doing our business. We came to get Van and 
My to tell us how we could work the old man 
to get our money. He owes us all money. I 
owe my brother-in-law for three weeks’ board, 
and they need it. My sister has a baby only 
two days old. The old man owes me six dol- 
lars, and puts off paying till I believe I ’ll never 
get it.” 

“Jinny is home crying her eyes out,” said 
Sadie, “ because to-morrow she is to be turned 
out for not paying her board, and they mean to 
keep her trunk, and Jim Apsley owes her seven 
dollars. She begged him for it to-night as hard 


IN WINTER BLASTS. 


281 


as she could pray, and he told her to find an- 
other shop if she liked ; it was n’t pay-day, and 
he had n’t looked over her pay-book.” 

“See here,” said Anna, “ I ’ve got it all down 
what he owes each one of us. I ’ll read it out,” 
and she read over the list of names and the 
deficiency. “He owes Job Burrel three dollars 
and Nate Ames four fifty. How much does he 
owe you two girls ?” 

“Seventeen dollars and thirty cents,” said 
Van. 

Anna wrote it down. Then she looked 
about. “How can we get it? It costs money to 
sue him, and if we tried it we ’d not get another 
place in the city perhaps. The employers would 
say we are troublesome. I ’ve thought I ’d scare 
him and tell him I ’d burn down the place. 
But I expect if I tried that he ’d arrest me.” 

“See here, Anna,” said Myra, “are you 
really willing to try and get this money if I 
tell you how ? Will you be afraid !” 

“Afraid? You catch me being afraid of 
that little whipper-snapper !” said big Anna with 
fine scorn. 

“ And will the rest of you leave it to Anna, 
and be contented if you are called up and given 
your money?” continued Myra. 

“You’d better believe we will. Money is 
what we ’re after !” 


282 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


Anna, come into the other room with me,” 
said Myra. 

After about fifteen minutes the two came 
back. “ It is all arranged,” said Myra quietly, 
“and I feel pretty sure that to-morrow noon 
Uncle James will pay you your dues.” 

The girls with shouts of joy prepared to 
leave — all but Sadie, who was asked to remain 
with Delia and have her cold further doctored 
by Miss Nancy. 

“ Myra, what have you planned ?” Van asked 
her sister when Miss Nancy and Mrs. Milbury 
had gone to bed, and the two sisters sat over 
the last spark of the kitchen fire. 

“ I could n’t bear to tell it before mother, 
and I did n’t want the other girls to know,” said 
Myra, “ but in that little dark place where the 
customers go to try on clothes Uncle James 
keeps a great quantity of cigars that have n’t any 
stamps on them, and sells them to his custom- 
ers — smuggled cigars, you see, and cigars that 
have not paid revenue duty. It is an offence 
and would make him liable to a big fine. I 
read all about it a week or so ago in one of the 
papers while I was taking care of the desk, and 
I saw Uncle James was liable. He does n’t mean 
any one in the shop shall. go in that little room, 
and he keeps the key. But one day the shop 
was empty, and I saw the key in the lock and 


IN WINTER BLASTS. 


283 

I walked in, driven by my curiosity, like Blue- 
beard’s wife. And there I saw all one side of 
the wall piled up with unstamped cigar-boxes, 
exactly as I had been reading in the paper. 
Now I have told Anna and that I will go with 
her to Uncle James and demand settlements for 
all the girls, and tell him if he refused we ’d 
call in a policeman and we ’d tell about his cigar 
trade. He will pay rather than be arrested and 
fined for revenue cheating.” 

** It is a hard remedy,” said Van, ^‘but I be- 
lieve you are right, Myra. These girls are in 
a terrible strait. They may just go to destruc- 
tion for want of their little wages.” 

“ I did n’t want them all to know,” said Myra. 
“ It seems a dreadful thing to meddle with any- 
way. But I must do it.” 

The next day, just before the noon bell, 
Myra and big Anna went to the shop and called 
Uncle James aside. Anna held her roughly 
drawn up bill of deficits. 

“We all want what’s back paid to us this 
noon, Mr. Apsley,” she said. “We wont wait 
any longer.” 

“Whistle till you get it,” said Uncle James 
with a leer. 

“ I ’ll whistle for a policeman,” said big 
Anna, “and have you arrested for cheating 
the revenue. How many boxes of cigars 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


284 

have you in the dressing-room ? I ’ll tell of 
those.” 

“ Nobody will believe you !” screamed Uncle 
James. 

“They’ll believe me!” said Myra quietly. 
“ Besides, Anna will not stir from before this 
dressing-room door till I call in a policeman. 
Our minds are made up, Uncle James.” 

Uncle James was a wizzened, small man, 
big Anna was like a German woman of the day 
of Tacitus, six feet tall, strongly made, large 
armed, tawny-haired, white skinned. There was 
rumor that big Anna sometimes got drunk, 
and was a fury, and had even repented of her 
ways in the station-house. Uncle James before 
her snarled and spit like a cat taking umbrage 
at a huge mastiff. 

“ Hurry up,” said big Anna ; “ call the girls 
down and settle. They don’t know this yet, 
only Myra and me. If you don’t pay, all the 
city will know it. Cash up quick ; your fine 
would be ten times the wages you have kept 
back.” 

“ I have n’t any money,” said Uncle James. 

“ Oh you can find plenty, I ’ve no doubt, at 
the cashier’s desk,” said Myra ; “ and if not, the 
bank is not far off and we must have the money 
at once or it will be the worse for you.” 

Uncle James yielded. He doggedly put on 


IN WINTER BLASTS. ’ 285 

his hat and with reluctant steps went to the 
bank a few squares off and drew some money. 
The noon bell had struck when he returned, 
and drawn up in line the shop-girls waited to 
receive him and their money. Great was the 
eagerness to know by what means Anna had 
gained her victory. Anna, however, for the 
present, kept her own counsel. 

‘‘ Uncle James, are you going to sell any 
more of those cigars?” asked Myra. 

No,” said Uncle James shortly. 

“ I do n’t believe you,” said Myra frankly ; 
“ but I may as well take you at your word. It 
is not my business to turn informer. I felt 
bound to help the girls get their money.” 

“And your own,” sneered Uncle James. 

“We are very poor,” said Myra. “That 
money will pay three months’ rent, half a month 
being now due. It will buy us a sack of flour 
and a ham and some kerosene oil. We need 
it.” 

“ I wish you ’d stayed in the country, you 
and Van,” said Uncle James. 

“ So do I, with all my heart,” said Myra. 

“Hereafter I don’t pay you and Van but 
three twenty-five a week. Take it or leave it 
as you like,” said the model uncle. 

“We hope that will be regularly paid, in 
which case we shall be better off than we have 


286 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


been since we came to the city,” retorted Myra. 
But she felt rich with her seventeen dollars in 
hand. 

The next week Myra took a heavy cold and 
was very near having pneumonia. She could 
not leave the house for over a week. The doc- 
tor said she needed heavy flannels, and how 
were they to be bought ? Christmas came with 
no good cheer except that Teddie was well and 
was to spend a week at Uncle Daniel’s. The 
mother succeeded in getting some knitting of 
baby socks to do, but the pay was very small. 
Mrs. Milbury was not a rapid knitter. Grandma 
had done all the knitting. 

Mrs. Milbury and Van had gone to prayer- 
meeting and Myra was lying on her bed well 
covered up, though she was dressed and had sat 
up all day. As she lay there she heard a great 
crash in Miss Nancy’s room. Alarmed for her 
hostess, Myra rose and groping through the 
dark hall to the kitchen sitting-room, found 
Miss Nancy standing aghast, and on the floor 
lying the famous picture bequeathed to her by 
Mr. Dotter, the frame sadly damaged. Miss 
Nancy was in tears. 

“ Miss Nancy ! what happened ? Did the pic- 
ture fall down ?” 

“ I dropped it. I reckon I a’ n’t quite as peart 
as I used to be.” 


IN WINTER BLASTS. 


287 

“But what were you trying to do with it?” 
demanded Myra, stooping to pick up some of 
the large gilded pieces that had broken off. 
“ The frame is not broken, that is, not the wood- 
en part, but this heavy plaster moulding which 
is gilded is badly broken.” 

“ I ’ll tell you the blessed truth,” said Miss 
Tempest, dropping into a chair. “I sat here 
studying over you and how you could have 
some stout flannels before you went out next 
week. Van said to-night you must have a pair 
of heavy flannel-lined boots and she could man- 
age them, but the rest she did not know what 
to do about ; so I thought of the text ‘ that the 
life is more than meat and the body more than 
raiment,’ and I put it a dear girl like you was 
more to me than a picter and a downright home- 
ly picter too ; so I says to myself, ‘ Nancy, the 
frame is handsome ; you take down the picter 
and slide out with it while they ’re at prayer- 
meetin’, worshippin’ God, and you sell it and 
buy that girl a suit of flannels, or some flannel 
goods for her mother to make up. Perhaps you 
can make a bargain, the Lord helping you, Nan- 
cy, and it will be your style of worship this 
evening,’ I says. ‘ The Lord a’ n’t particular ; 
he takes what you do to his children as done 
to him,’ I says. So up I got on a cheer and took 
the picter from the nail. But I kinder lost my 


288 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


balance, and like an idiot I dropped the picter. 
So there it lies, ruinated, for the frame is all 
about it worth a dime, and I ’ll own I 'm sorry, 
for it was the only real aristocratic-looking thing 
I owned. Maybe I took too much pride in it. 
Well, I am a fool! Crying over a picter! As 
if by this time old Nancy Tempest had n’t got 
hardened to misfortune.” 

“ And you were willing to sell your picture 
to buy me some flannel!” cried Myra, flinging 
herself upon Nancy and hugging her desper- 
ately. “ Well, you are good! I never heard the 
like ! And now your picture is spoiled for me.” 
Then with another hug, “ Let us look at it,” 
and down on her knees on the floor, she laid the 
wrecked frame on its back and began fitting the 
pieces of gilding in their ancient seats. Myra 
was skilful, the heavy English moulding had 
not crumbled into petty fragments. Miss Nancy 
bent forward and began to be interested in see- 
ing her frame grow together again. Myra went 
for a cup of flour and wet it into a dough-like 
paste. Finally it was done just as Van and her 
mother came in. 

“ There, let it lie in the corner on its back 
for two or three days and then it will be solid 
and we ’ll hang it up,” said Myra, and told the 
tale of Miss Tempest’s sacrifice. “ Do n’t fret, any 
of you, about the flannels,” said Myra. I reckon 


IN WINTER BLASTS. 


289 

the Lord cares for me as much as Miss Nancy- 
does, and either he ’ll send the flannels or help 
me not to need them.” And again Miss Nancy 
was treated to tearful thanks and caresses. 

“ Never mind the picter,” said Miss Nancy ; 
“ it looks as well as ever, but the frame being 
ruinated, it ’s past selling. Now it is only worth 
anything as reminding of poor Mr. Dotter.” 

The next day was New Year’s, and early in 
the morning came a letter from Aunt Harriet 
Proctor with ten dollars for a Christmas gift 
for the “ Milbury maids,” a similar ten having 
been sent to Teddie to help her with her pur- 
chases. Now there would be flannels ! An hour 
after the expressman brought a somewhat be- 
lated box, which, as the weather was very cold, 
had not suffered by delay. This was a royal box, 
packed by Teddie, Aunt Sara Ann, and grand- 
ma: home-made nut-candy and pop-corn balls, 
jumbles, a raisin cake, a roasted roll of beef, 
butter, bread, pickles, jam, two chickens dressed 
but uncooked, a round box with four mince pies 
packed therein, a little knitted shawl for each 
of the girls and Mrs. Milbury, and a dollar 
each. The Milbury maids and Delia danced 
about the box, Mrs. Milbury cried. Miss Nancy 
cried, Delia was sent out to invite Sadie to a 
feast, and great were the midwinter rejoicings 
in No. 8 Aspen Square. 


Adam’s Daughters. 


19 


290 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

When they were seated at dinner in Miss 
Nancy’s kitchen, all in their shabby best, but 
looking very happy, said Miss Nancy, “ I want 
to make a clean breast of it. Last evening, as I 
sat here worrying over Myra’s flannels, I was not 
laying the case before the Lord as much as on 
my own heart ; I wasn’t asking God’s help with 
all my heart, but I was inquiring what Nancy 
Tempest could do. So I figured out that way 
about the picter, and you see how it ended. 
After I got to bed it came to me as clear as if 
a voice spoke it, ‘ Trust in the Lord with all thy 
heart and lean not to thine own understanding. 
In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and he shall 
direct thy paths.’ So I thought how foolish 
it was of me not to get my liberty out of my 
troubles by that key of Promise which Bunyan’s 
Pilgrim used to let him out of Doubting Castle. 
Like him I had kept it forgotten in my bosom. 
So I went to praying and pleading the dear 
Lord’s promises, and it helped me amazingly to 
think that Mrs. Milbury was no doubt praying 
for help for her child, and Van too and Myra ; 
and I thought how it is promised that when 
two or three of us agree here on earth touching 
something to pray over it shall be done by the 
Father in heaven. When my mind was fixed 
on that I slept as easy as a baby, realizing how 
good it is to cast all our care on Him that careth 


IN WINTER BLASTS. 


291 


for ns. Why I just knew that help was coming ; 
and now observe all the Lord has sent ns over 
and above what we asked for !” 

‘‘Yes,” said Mrs. Milbury, “it is true that 
we have strong consolation and a door of hope 
in prayer. Every day I seem to be learning 
more of how I may go to God with all my affairs ; 
and oh what a comfort it is to feel that I have 
put all into His hands who has for me a Father’s 
heart!” 

Delia and Sadie listened with astonished, 
wide-open eyes. This was strange and wonder- 
ful to them 


292 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

STREET BOYS AND STREET BEGGARS. 

“Every smallest hand can lend some kind and helpful touch, 
Lift the weight a little, and the many make the much ; 
Shared feasts are savory feasts, shared joys are best ; 

And the sharers and the shared with both alike are blest.” 

S. COOLIDGE. 

That stouted-hearted word of Grandma Mil- 
bury, “Well, well, if the Lord chooses to send 
me to school to affliction, Satan shall not hin- 
der me of the best lessons to be learned there,” 
had become a word of power in the family. 
They had learned from it to get the best that 
was possible out of trouble, and from disaster, of 
body or estate, to gain the spiritual or mental 
good. 

Having fallen into very difflcult places in 
Philadelphia, they had need to be constantly 
reminding each other that it was well to take 
heed and not be demoralized while they were 
defeated. 

“We must not let retreat become rout,” said 
Myra to Van, “ even if we are conquered in our 
battle.” 

“ As to retreat, I do n’t know where we would 


STREET BOYS AND STREET BEGGARS. 293 

retreat to,” said Van. “We have no one to fall 
back upon.” 

“ Hush, child,” said mamma Milbury ; “ you 
have God to fall back upon. You 11 learn that 
after a while.” 

Perhaps it was because they were not each one 
left alone to gnaw their hearts over their trials, 
but had the strength of such mutual encourage- 
ments, that trouble did not make them sour and 
neglectful of others, but more full of sympathy. 
Feeling their own toes and fingers nipped, 
and shivering themselves in sleety storms that 
were not met in the bracing power of plenty 
of good food, they turned comprehending, not 
indifferent, eyes on those evidently more im- 
poverished than themselves. Van was especially 
tender-hearted towards the poor; and I think 
that in these bitter days Van suffered as much 
for the wretched paupers that she saw in the 
city about her as she did for herself. 

“ I hate the city !” she cried to her mother, 
“ when I can do nothing to lift this load of mis- 
ery that I see bowing people down to the earth. 

I think if I had such a fortune as Nelly Ames, 
and could live here and help folks, I should be 
perfectly happy.” 

“ Perhaps in your lack of experience you 
might do as much harm by lavish giving as Nel- 
ly Ames by withholding,” said her mother. 


294 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

“ O motlier ! Of course I should know a poor 
person when I saw him,” said Van confidently. 

Among those who moved her heart was an 
old woman who lived in a tiny alley that opened 
out of Aspen Square. The bent form and gray 
hairs of this desolate creature, her ragged cloth- 
ing, the dim eyes, the yellow wrinkled hand 
stretched out for alms, nearly broke Van’s heart. 
Oh! to think of grandma or mamma Milbury 
in such a state ! Poor as she was herself. Van 
could not resist dropping a penny now and then 
into the thin cold hand, and she always spoke 
pleasantly to the miserable beggar when they 
met. They met often, for the old woman set 
off for her niche on Chestnut Street about the 
time Van and Myra faced the raw cold morning, 
hastening to their work for the inexorable Uncle 
James. 

Heaven bless you, ladies dear !” the old 
crone would cry after them, and a smile would 
break over her haggard face at Van’s hearty 
Good morning, grannie !” In fact the beggar 
believed that these words from a girl so inno- 
cent and kindly had the potency of a charm or an 
amulet, and she would linger about the doorways 
of her wretched neighbors until she saw the 
sisters passing the end of the alley as they went 
down the court, when she would hobble after 
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STREET BOYS AND STREET BEGGARS. 295 

One evening Van was coming home alone, 
and had overtaken the old woman, and could not 
resist giving her a nickel. “ I ’ll eat less to-mor- 
row, and make it up,” she said to herself. 

“ The blessing of all the saints be on ye, dar- 
tin’,” said the beneficiary, pocketing the coin. 

Van passed on, smiling, and Nancy Tempest 
came up with her. 

“ You ought n’t to do that. Miss Milbury,” said 
Nancy. “ You ’ve no money to throw away.” 

Van reddened. “I know I’m poor. Miss 
Nancy ; but I ’ll make it up somehow. I ’m not 
so poor as she is. It makes me sick to see her, 
so old and so forlorn.” 

Maybe you ’re wasting your pity,” said Nan- 
cy. How many people in a day do you suppose 
feel for her rags and her misery, just as you 
do? You haven’t the only soft heart in the 
world.” 

“ I hope not,” said Van coldly. 

Nancy never minded the coldness. “ I think 
these .street beggars find their trade a good one, 
and bring home more in a day than honester 
people.” 

“ If she got much she would have a warm 
dress and shawl — ” 

“And a muff and fur-top overshoes?” said 
Miss Nancy. “How many hearts would she 
touch if she went out rigged up in that style ? 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


296 

No, no, Miss Milbury, you take my word for it, 
her rags and her whine, and all that, are part of 
her stock in trade. When I first came from the 
country I felt as you do, but I ’ve learned better. 
People like that are not the real objects of char- 
ity. It is poverty that stays at home and works 
and starves, not that whines on the streets, that 
is the real suffering poverty. There ’s plenty of 
misery around us, and the heaviest part of it is 
the part that tries its best to keep hid, as sure as 
my name ’s Nancy Tempest. Does any one 
guess, seeing a respectable lady-like young wo- 
man like you going along, holding your head 
up and your shoulders back, that maybe you 
have scarce a nickel in your pocket and are fret- 
ting where your next meal is to come from ? 
When folks see me going along with my little 
marketing in my willow-basket that I ’ve carried 
for twenty years, my shawl thick, if it is pretty 
rusty, my bonnet well brushed, if it is about ten 
years behind the time, no rags to show on my 
gown, my gloves mended, do they imagine that 
some days I go without my supper, and that I 
know the inside of a pawn-shop, and am fighting 
just as hard as woman can fight for holding soul 
and body together? The city is full of such 
kind of misery.” 

“ You only make me more and more unhap- 
py,” cried Van, laying her hand on Miss Nancy’s 


STREET BOYS AND STREET BEGGARS. 297 

shoulder, for they had come into the house and 
stood by Miss Nancy’s stove. “ And yet, because 
there is horrible poverty that I do n’t suspect, I 
should not shut my eyes to the poverty I see. 
Why I must be kind to that old creature ! I 
dream of her.” 

“I do n’t say not to be kind, child. Speak 
kind ; kind words go a long way in helping.” 

“ Words, words, words are only breath. Miss 
Nancy. Don’t you know St. James says, ‘If a 
brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily 
food, and one of you say unto them. Depart in 
peace, be ye warmed and filled, notwithstanding 
ye give them not those things which are needful 
to the body, what doth it profit ?’ ” 

“ That is all right, but there ’s the ‘ brother or 
sister ’ and the ‘ naked and destitute of food ;’ are 
you sure of that?” 

“ But, Miss Nancy, she must be destitute — 
look at her. And as for the brother and sister 
part, I know God does not mean to limit our 
giving to Christian folks. In proportion, I fancy 
only few Christians in this country are very 
needy. Does it not say in the Bible that God 
‘ maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, 
and sendeth his rain on the just and the unjust’ ? 
That is example for us.” 

“ That ’s true. But God sends sun and rain 
where they are needed and well used. The 


298 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


ground a’ n’t ungrateful as folks, child. I count 
that there ’s more vice than need in the old wo- 
man.” 

That night Van remarked to Myra that “ it 
was a pity that Miss Nancy was so hard- 
hearted.” But Van found that Myra would not 
admit that Miss Nancy was hard-hearted. A 
day or two after, as the sisters returned home, 
they met Van’s old woman coughing violently 
and leaning against the wall at the corner of the 
alley. Evidently she was nearly exhausted. 

“ Myra,” said Van, “ you go home or mother 
will worry. I will help this poor old soul up to 
her room and see if I can do anything for her. 
Don’t fidget about me ; I am not afraid.” 

She took her prot^g^’s arm to aid her, and 
after a time got her up the three flights of stairs 
to the attic where she lived. Lightless, fireless, 
desolate ! Van struck a match and found a little 
dirty lamp with a few spoonfuls of oil in it. She 
put the old woman in a chair and made a tiny 
fire with a handful of wood and coal which lay 
on the hearth of the broken, rusty grate. Then 
she put a battered kettle over the fire, with some 
water to heat, and made up, as well as she could, 
the dirty, ragged cot-bed, which she drew near 
the fire. The old woman had pulled off her 
shoes, and informed Van that she “ always lay 
down in her day clothes, as she had no night- 


STREET BOYS AND STREET BEGGARS. 299 

dress.” With some disgust at this revelation, 
Van helped her into the cot and tucked the 
torn shawl over her as additional covering. 

** You need some coal and some oil, and some 
ginger and sugar to make you a strong ginger 
tea,” she said. “ Have you nothing here in your 
room ?” 

“ No, my dear young lady ; go and get them 
for me.” 

“ But — I have no money,” said Van : “ not a 
cent.” 

The old woman began to moan. 

“ I think I should send for an ambulance and 
have you go to a hospital,” said Van. “I think 
you are going to be very sick unless you are 
taken care of at once.” 

“ Oh I can’t leave my room,” cried the woman 
frantically. “ Go get me some medicine, and 
some hot broth or coffee, dearie.” 

Here Miss Nancy Tempest suddenly ap- 
peared, and Van felt full of gratitude for her op- 
portune and thoughtful arrival. She spoke with 
decision. “ The young lady has no money, and 
I have none ; we are both as poor as Job’s tur- 
keys. But you have n’t held out your hand all 
day and got nothing. If you want things, I ’ll 
go and buy for you.” 

The woman groaned, fumbled in her clothes, 
and handed Miss Nancy a number of dimes. 


300 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


nickels, and coppers. Miss Nancy took an ex- 
haustive survey of the room and went out. 
While she was gone Van found an old broom 
and brushed up the dirty floor, discovered some 
parts of an old towel and a lump of brown soap, 
and used the water she had heated to wash the 
patient’s hands and face. By the time this was 
done, and water had been heated again. Miss 
Nancy returned with a boy bringing fuel. Miss 
Nancy gave the shivering patient a bowl of hot 
ginger tea and made a slice of toast, mixed a 
poultice of lard and mustard and put it on her 
chest, heated a brick from the hearth and laid it 
at her feet. 

“ Now,” she said, “ I ’ll go to the dispensary 
and get you some medicine, and ask the doctor 
to come and see you. Then I must take the 
young lady home, but if you want one of the 
neighbors to stay with you I ’ll bring one.” 

“ No, no,” said the woman in alarm. “ Do n’t 
bring any one. I am better. I ’ll sleep. I ’d 
rather be alone, dearie.” 

When Miss Nancy was gone the old woman 
said to Van, “ I ’m so awful poor, dearie. To- 
morrow noon wont you go to the soup-kitchen 
and get coals for me ? There ’s my tickets on 
the mantel-shelf. Just you ask for my pail of 
soup and a loaf, and tell them to send me a 
bushel of coal, dearie.” 


STREET BOYS AND STREET BEGGARS. 30I 

Accordingly next day Van spent her noon- 
hour in going for soup, which with a loaf she 
carried in haste to her old woman, heated the 
soup, made toast and fed her, and told her the 
coals would be sent. Evidently the poor wretch 
was very ill. Her anxious furtive eyes rolled 
here and there as she gasped for breath. She 
refused to have her bed re-made, and lay pant- 
ing and groaning. 

“ Doctor says its newmony,” she gasped ; 
“but don’t let ’em take me to no orspital, 
dearie !’’ 

For two or three days Van did what she could 
for the old woman. She grew accustomed to 
the alley; no one molested her; the few men 
stepped out of her way, and pulled their caps in 
sign of courtesy, as she passed on her errands of 
mercy. On Sabbath she remained with the wo- 
man most of the day. The doctor had sent plen- 
ty of coals, and a lady from the Soup Kitchen 
Committee had on Saturday brought a night- 
gown and a clean sheet and some towels. 

On Sunday afternoon it was evident that the 
woman had but a few hours to live. She asked 
Van to send one of the neighbor boys for her 
priest. The priest and his attendant came, and 
Van withdrew to the shelter of the dormer win- 
dow, and looked out upon the snowy roofs, while 
the dying one made her confession. But when 


302 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


it was over, and the oil had been touched upon 
the head, hands, and feet of the woman, the 
priest did not go away ; he took his chair and 
sat by the fire reading his breviary. He sent 
away his deacon, and Nancy Tempest came in 
and tried to give the dying beggar a little tea ; 
she declined ; she had confessed and been ab- 
solved ; she wanted nothing. She signed to Van. 

Dearie, reach under me tick, an’ — pull — 
out — the two rolls — there — O Virgin of Sorrows ! 
have pity on me !” 

Van reached between cot and tick and pulled 
out first one and then another roll, made of 
stocking-legs tied at each end, between the thin 
web of which shone silver and gold, and little 
lumps showed crumpled bills. The priest drew 
near the bed with interest. 

Lay it here near my breast,” said the wo- 
man, clutching and hugging her treasure as a 
dying mother might clasp and hold a babe. 

Father, ye ’ll lave it me till the breath goes out 
of me body ? An’ then ye ’ll bury me — with it 
dacent ; and put — me up a stone— an’ ye ’ll have 
the rest of it — for the church — an’ the howly 
saints— an’ ye’ll say plenty of prayers for my 
soul ?” This with gasps and groans. 

The priest bowed his head. ‘'Yes, yes; I 
will see to your burial and the masses.” 

“All that money!” cried Van; “and see!” 


STREET BOYS AND STREET BEGGARS. 303 

she swept her arm around towards the dirty, 
empty room. 

“ Five thousand it is,” said the woman, hug- 
ging it. 

“ Wretched creature ! she has made an idol 
of it !” said the priest to Van softly, then opened 
his book and began rapidly to read the Prayers 
for the Dying, for an awful change had come 
over the withered, sallow countenance ; the eyes 
set and the lean jaws fell. 

With a face of horror Van gazed at this 
death-bed scene. A convulsion shook the pass- 
ing miser, one of the rolls dropped from her 
clasping arms and fell upon the floor with a 
crash. The old stocking-leg burst open, and 
gold, silver, and bills rolled upon the foul 
boards. No one stooped for it ; the owner did 
not miss it ; a rattling sound filled the attic. 

“ Gone,” said the priest, and closing his book 
made the sign of the cross. Just then his deacon 
returned with four long candles, a crucifix, a 
vase of holy water, and a large clean linen sheet. 

“ We will send some of the neighbors up,” 
said Nancy, and taking Van’s hand she led her 
away, leaving the corpse on the bed, the priest 
reading his breviary by the fireplace, and the 
deacon on his knees gathering up silver and 
gold. 

“ Who ’d have thought,” said Miss Nancy as 


304 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


they went down the stairs, “ that in that wretched 
attic we should learn so well what is meant by 
‘ The love of money is the root of all evil !’ 
‘ What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul ?’ Where is that 
soul’s profit now ?” 

“ But, Miss Nancy, see how little of what we 
call worldly good she had. No comfort, no lux- 
ury, neither cleanliness, warmth, food, friends, 
beauty — nothing but a few bits of hard metal 
and crumpled dirty paper,” cried Van. 

“Yes, it seems very little; but suppose the 
worship had been not of the money itself, but of 
the personal selfish luxuries that money brings ; 
suppose, instead of a miser beggar, this had been 
a selfish, self-serving. God-forgetting millionaire, 
would the soul have fared any better ? And to 
God’s angels looking on would it not have all 
seemed equally base and blind and miserable — 
all dross and filthy rags?” 

Van’s nerves were completely unstrung ; she 
cried all the way home, and more or less for the 
next two hours. “ I ’ll never dare to pity any 
one again,” she sobbed. 

“ Oh yes, you will,” said Miss Nancy, who 
had told the strange tale to Myra and mamma 
Milbury. “ Just leave the professional beggars 
out. Stick to the children. They ’re always to 
be pitied, and the hard-working, half-paid ones. 


STREET BOYS AND STREET BEGGARS. 305 


and the sick. The good Lord knows there 's al- 
ways call enough on our feelings.” 

The children! Yes, indeed, Van and Myra 
and mamma Milbury felt for them. They never 
spared kind words and smiles for the poor little 
gamins. Every bit of tinsel or handkerchief 
ribbon, every fancy card that Van and Myra 
could pick up from the waste of the shop, every 
clipping of striped silk lining, they carried off to 
give the careworn small girls who nursed babies 
in every court and alley-way, or to the poor lit- 
tle forlorn ones turned out on the curb-stones 
while the mothers gossiped or toiled or perhaps 
drank in the rum-shops. 

And how often on the Sabbath Van led home 
some wretched, small, cold, lean Arab of the 
streets, soused his head and neck in hot suds, 
sewed buttons on his clothes, and gave him a big 
bowl of hot soup, made in mamma Milbury’s in- 
comparable style, which secured wonderful soup 
out of very cheap materials. Van’s Sunday 
soup tasted so much better when some hungry 
child sat toasting his cold legs by the stove and 
drank soup with hearty relish. 

After dinner Van showed her Sunday com- 
pany pictures from the Milbury big Bible, told 
him some Stories, gave him some sound warn- 
ings about stealing, drinking, and lying, and sent 
him away at nightfall with her blessing. 

20 


Adam’s Daughters. 


306 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

I know you ’ll get fever or small-pox, or 
something awful, from such ragamuffins as you 
bring in here,” said Miss Nancy ; “ but poor lit- 
tle rabbits, how I pity ’em ! If you do catch 
anything, I ’ll nurse you !” 

These little charities threw some small 
gleams of light along the dim and weary path 
that Adam’s disinherited daughters were now 
treading ; which pathway led daily into deeper 
and deeper depths of night and sorrow, and yet 
each day they felt more fully that their Lord 
was near them leading them through this dark- 
ness, and they leaned on Him who in all their 
afflictions had been afflicted, and the angel of his 
presence saved them. 


THE HEGIRA OF UNCLE JAMES. 


307 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE HEGIRA OF UNCLE JAMES. 

“ Who bears no trace of passion’s evil force, 

Who shuns thy sting, O terrible remorse ! 

Who would not cast 
Half of his fortune from him but to win 
Wakeless oblivion from the wrong and sin 

Of the sealed past !” 

A LARGE part of the world dates all its trans- 
actions from the flight of Mohammed in A. D. 
622. In 1688 a very bad dynasty, that of the 
Stuarts, took its flight from England, in the 
person of James II., and a very good man 
named William of Orange came in. History has 
embalmed for later admiration or imitation many 
of these Hegiras. Four hundred years before 
Christ the Greeks under Xenophon made an 
orderly and famous retreat from Persia ; if it was 
a flight, it was methodical and of fifteen months’ 
duration and ended in immortal renown. Thir- 
ty years before Christ Antony made shameful 
flight after a galley with purple sails wherein 
reclined the fatal Egyptian. 

When Mary of Scots took flight for England 
she went to be a prisoner, not a guest ; the retreat 
of Bonaparte from Moscow became a rout which 


308 ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 

finally landed him in St. Helena. In 1709, after 
the battle of Pultowa, Charles XII. of Sweden 
ended a magnificent career by flight to try the 
tender mercies of the Turk. When in 1807 the 
royal family of Portugal fled from Lisbon to 
Brazil, they went to over eighty years of em- 
pire ; so brave a man as Lafayette fled in 1 792 
from the rage of the Jacobins only to spend 
five years in an Austrian prison. Thus the 
great people of the earth have taken to flight, 
with result fair or foul as may be, and history 
chronicles and the world looks on. Only such 
simple pages as these record, and a few humble 
shop-girls and two seedy clerks kept in lifelong 
remembrance, the flight of uncle James. 

It was on the last day of January ; the morn- 
ing was cold, sleety, miserable ; the streets were 
full of slush, and the gutters ran curb-high with 
dirty icy floods. The breakfast had been but 
scanty, the mother had looked unusually pale ; 
Van and Myra arrived before the “ Gentlemen’s 
Furnishing and Ready Made Emporium” to find 
the shutters up, the door open, no fires, strange 
men in charge, a dozen of angry employes in a 
noisy crowd telling how they had been tricked 
and defrauded. It was Saturday morning ; 
all were out of a week’s wages. Uncle James 
had gathered together ten thousand dollars and 
fled, leaving the sheriff in possession. Rumor 


THE HEGIRA OF UNCLE JAMES. 


309 

was not very precise as to why he had gone. 
Some said big Anna had taken too much beer 
and had discoursed freely of revenue cheating ; 
others said that Uncle James had paid neither 
rent nor bills for many a day, laying by in store 
for the hour when his numerous creditors should 
come upon him and he should fly with his gains. 
The only thing certain was that Uncle James 
was gone. Says Bulwer in his “ Parisians,” “ In 
Paris mankind is divided into two classes : one 
bites, the other steals ; shun both ; devote your- 
self to cats.” Uncle James did not Ifve in Paris, 
but he had improved on the Parisian type of 
character : at once savage and mean, he both bit 
and stole. 

Van and Myra, amazed at this new crisis in 
a fate already sufiiciently evil, stood silent, while 
their comrades cried and recriminated. “ Come, 
come, there is nothing here for any of you,” said 
the man in charge. You are in the way ; you 
disturb us. Go out, will you ?” 

“ But our money, our wages ! We want what 
is due us.” 

“Just now an inventory is being made, and 
until that is done nothing else can be done. 
Come back with your claims to-morrow or next 
day. Perhaps there will be something to settle 
with then.” 

“ But,” said Van, “ I ran my own sewing- 


310 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


machine. It is the best one in the shop. I 
brought it when I came. I must take it away. 
I will bring a man at once.” 

‘‘ No you do n’t,” retorted the fellow roughly. 
“ Next move every blessed girl of you would be 
carrying off machines. We have no right to 
let a solitary thing go out of this shop. We are 
in possession for the creditors and they ’ll get 
precious little.” 

“ But the machine is mine ; I brought it from 
home ; I must have it.” 

“ It is part of the assets now,” said the sheriff 
deputy. “ Can you prove Apsley had not bought 
it of you? Have you any paper to show that 
he had hired the machine of you ? What rent 
did he pay you for the machine ? Where is the 
receipt ?” 

Alas ! Van had not been shrewd enough to 
claim pay for the use of her machine, nor had 
she any papers to show why it should not be 
counted as Uncle James’ property. 

“ I know it is hers,” said Delia. “ It was 
brought the day she came, and she always said 
it was hers. Mr. Apsley never claimed it:” 

“ He kept it though,” said the man ; “ it ’s his 
in law unless she can prove it is hers. You ’ll 
have to apply to the court about it, young wo- 
man. The machines are the best part of the 
stock, and we can’t have them carried off.” 


THE HEGIRA OF UNCLE JAMES. 3II 

“ My machine is up there too,” called Kate. 

I brought it here with me and I mean to have 
it.” 

Now Van had often heard Kate say that she 
had sold her machine to Uncle James, and that 
part of the back debt he had been forced to pay 
her was on the machine. Yet here was Kate 
claiming the machine as her own and making 
Van’s case worse than ever. 

“ Come, you must go. You can bring your 
claims in next week, and see if there is any one 
here to attend to them. As to the machines, if 
they are yours you ’d best go see a lawyer about 
it.” 

The men pushed the excited shop-girls to- 
wards the door, and Van and Myra were the first 
to hurry out. 

We really cannot go home and tell this to 
mother until we have arranged some way of 
getting on,” said Myra. 

“ I ’m going down to the restaurant where 
Bell Crane is,” said Delia. “ They want a dish- 
washer and I ’ll try that for a while.” 

Delia went off and Sadie lingered near the 
sisters. “ I ’m real sorry for you,” she said, and 
you ’ve lost your machine. Van ; you will never 
get it. I ’m going to a cousin of mine. I was 
there last night, and her husband said he ’d give 
a girl a dollar a week and board to tend his wife 


312 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

and the two children for a month, so I ’ll go 
there and do that while I ’m looking for a new 
place. What will you do ?” 

“ We ’ll find something,” said Van bravely. 
“ Good-by, Sadie.” 

“Where can we go to think?” said Myra. 
“ We shall freeze in the streets. My feet and 
skirts are wet now. Oh even that work-room 
looks safe and comfortable, now that We have 
nowhere to go.” 

“ Let us go to the railroad station,” said Van 
desperately. “We can find chairs there and a 
nice waiting-room and registers to dry our feet 
by. Come on, Myra, we will think it out there.” 

Entering the station they found nearly every 
one running out the further door. “You’ve 
lost your train,” said the woman in attendance. 

“The B train is just gone. You ’ll have to 

wait three hours.” 

Van made no answer but a nod, and she and 
Myra sat down to dry their feet. The room was 
clean and comfortable. 

“ We wont tell mother just at present,” whis- 
pered Van to Myra. “ She has about as much 
now as she can bear.” 

“ She ’ll find it out when we do n’t go to the 
shop nor bring home any money,” said Myra. 

“I ’ll tell you what we must do about her,” 
said Van with decision. “ I ’ll go over to that 


THE HEGIRA OF UNCLE JAMES. 313 

little stationer’s shop and get paper and envelope 
and write a letter to Uncle Daniel. I ’ll tell him 
that mother is not at all well, the city does not 
agree with her, and things are not going just as 
we had hoped. I ’ll say we can stay with our 
landlady. Miss Tempest, and get on very well if 
he will invite mother to go out to the farm until 
spring. Then she can go and see Teddie for 
two weeks. I ’ll tell him we will send mother 
all the money we can, for we don’t mean to 
burden him, and he is not to let her know we 
wrote, but just beg her to come and see grand- 
ma. When once mother is gone, you and I can 
pinch ourselves as much as we have to, and no 
one need be any the wiser. We can go out 
working or do anything. We wont let Teddie 
nor mother know one word about our hard 
times. If we can keep them out of the trouble 
you and I will stand by each other and bear it.” 

“ Well, that plan may work,” said Myra ; 
“ get your letter off in the noon mail, and Uncle 
Daniel will have it Monday, and we will send 
mother off in a week’s time. Suppose you ask 
the woman at the stationer’s if she knows of 
anything you can get to do. While you are 
gone I ’ll see if the waiting woman here can 
throw any light on our case. It must be so big 
a city has some work for us.” 

The letter was sent to Uncle Daniel; the day 


314 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

had cleared a little, the girls were warm and 
dry, and they set out to look for work. 

“We have the railroad stations to rest in,” 
said Van ; “ we can go into another when we are 
tired out.” 

The search for work did not open well. The 
“ holiday rush ” was over and the period of inac- 
tion had come. They had made no acquaintan- 
ces in the city but with shop-girls even more 
forlorn than themselves. None of their home 
friends had known any one in Philadelphia to 
whom to give them letters ; Mr. Lowell’s city 
life had passed in New York. They had learned 
little of the city since they entered it except the 
sordid misery about them ; to go from 8 Aspen 
Square to Uncle James’ emporium in the morn- 
ing and back at night, and two squares for 
church on Sunday — this was all which they had 
seen of the splendid city which had lured them 
from afar. And also Van had gone to the Chest- 
nut Street warehouse for which her mother did 
a little knitting. 

Every one said that “ work was scarce and 
hands were being dismissed, not taken on.” 
Finally one place was found where the manager 
was willing to take Van for three dollars and a 
quarter a week, if she brought her own machine 
and a good recommendation. “ It was the ma- 
chine that decided it.” 


THE HEGIRA OF UNCLE JAMES. 315 

** But my sister?” said Van ; “we want to go 
together.” 

“Couldn’t possibly take two. Wouldn’t 
take you, only a girl who can bring her own 
machine is pretty sure to be respectable and 
steady.” 

“We must go again to see about that ma- 
chine,” said Van. 

They were so tired they could hardly move, 
but returned to the emporium of the missing 
Uncle James. Confusion reigned there. Goods 
were being carried away. Van again asserted 
her claim upon the machine. “ That next one 
is mine !” she cried. 

“Suppose all the girls claimed their ma- 
chines !” said a man. “ There was another one 
tried that game this morning, you know.” 

“ But this really is mine. I can prove it.” 

“ How?” 

“ By my sister here ; she knows I brought it 
from the country.” 

“ Pooh ! Pity you had n’t kept it there.” 

“ The other girls know it too,” insisted Van. 

“ Poor proof. They know what you said 
about it, that is all. There is no proof that he 
had not bought it of you or taken it on a debt. 
It is found among his things. If it really is 
yours, more is the pity ; you are so much out, 
that ’s all.” 


3i6 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


Wont there be money enough out of the 
stock to pay what is due ?" asked Myra. “We 
are all owed wages.” 

“ Stock ! It was run down to mere nothing, 
worth nothing ; all was shoddy, shoddy, shoddy.” 

Once more the girls left the shop of Uncle 
James, never to enter it any more. On Monday it 
was closed, and for many days after. Van never 
saw or heard of her machine again. It was lost 
utterly in the wreck of Uncle James’ fortunes. 

The next day the girls rested at home, for it 
was the Sabbath. On Monday they renewed 
their weary round, and Myra got some crochet 
work to do from the firm where her mother had 
had work. She gave the dollar sent from home 
for a New Year’s gift as security for her needles 
and wool. Myra was quite expert with the cro- 
chet-needle ; she could make thirty-five or forty 
cents some days. She remained at home work- 
ing on the wool, saying Uncle James did not 
need her for the present. Van alone pursued 
the weary round of the city streets, looking for 
work, following up advertisements found in the 
newspapers. 

They deceived their mother in so far as they 
kept these new disasters from her. Uncle Dan- 
iel answered their letter very promptly, and also, 
with the prescience of love, sent money for the 
railroad ticket; Uncle Daniel saw farther into 


THE HEGIRA OF UNCLE JAMES. 317 

Van’s forlorn little letter than she had dreamed 
that he would. He wrote that he “ wished they 
would all come back to the farm and sink or 
swim together. They would be sure of food 
enough there, anyway.” 

The girls urged their mother to go. She ob- 
jected to leaving them alone in the city. To 
her and to Uncle Daniel these young women 
would always be the girls,” with the glamour 
of childhood about them, to be loved and pro- 
tected and advised and helped along. The 
“ Milbury maids ” were seeing more of the world 
than ever their mother had known, but they 
were “ the children ” still. 

“Miss Nancy will look out after us,” said 
Myra, humoring her mother’s idea. “ You ’d be 
so much better in the country. Teddie wants to 
see you, and poor grandma is growing old ; you 
really ought to go. And then, as times are so 
slack now, it would be quite a help to you to be 
at Uncle Daniel’s.” 

“ If you break down and get to be ill here, it 
will be so dreadful for us all, mammy,” said Van. 
“ If you go home you can help Teddie with her 
sewing and do some for us by-and-by.” 

Thus urged, Mrs. Milbury agreed to go. Van 
took her well treasured Christmas dollar and 
bought something for the mother’s luncheon, 
and little city nick-nacks, unknown to country 


3I8 ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 

stores, for grandma, Aunt Sara Ann, Teddie, and 
the three younger of the six Milbury boys. A 
little money goes so far at five and ten cent 
counters, and these purchases gave quite a fes- 
tive look to Mrs. Milbury’s trunk and soothed 
Van’s pride. No one would know just what 
they cost, and they would be saved the humilia- 
tion of seeming as poor as they were. 

The girls took their mother to the depot and 
saw her off. It was just a week since the flight 
of Uncle James. Mrs. Milbury had said per- 
haps she ought to bid James good-by and tell him 
to be kind to her girls, but Van dissuaded her. 

“ I feel like a criminal,” said Van, when hav- 
ing watched the car out of sight she and Myra 
left the station. “ We do n’t know how to de- 
ceive ; we never before cheated the poor dear 
mammy.” 

“ It was for her good, to keep her from break- 
ing her heart,” said Myra. 

“ I feel,” said Van, “ as if I were treading 
sure enough ‘ the hard and thorny way to heav- 
en.’ I don’t know who said it.” 

“ Ophelia, in ‘ Hamlet,’ ” said Myra. “ It was 
in our quotation book.” 

“ It is a pity, Myra Milbury, that a girl with 
your memory should be tramping the streets of 
Philadelphia, vainly looking for shop- work,” said 
Van bitterly. 


THE HEGIRA OF UNCLE JAMES. 319 

It is a greater pity,” said Myra, “that a girl 
with my memory did not set herself diligently 
to learn, when she had opportunity, some useful, 
really necessary, and money-worth occupation 
really well, so she would not have been reduced 
to such straits as this.” 

“We must go right back to the house and 
tell Miss Nancy the entire truth about Uncle 
James,” said Van. “I shall die of keeping it to 
ourselves any longer. It seems only fair to poor 
mother, now she is away, to be frank with Miss 
Nancy.” 

They returned therefore to 8 Aspen Square. 
Miss Nancy was at her window making button- 
holes. When they came in she looked over her 
spectacles, demanding, 

“ What have you girls been doing with your- 
selves since your uncle James ran away?” 

“ Looking for work,” said Van promptly. 
“When did you find it out? You didn’t tell 
mother, did you?” 

“ I found it out yesterday from an old — week 
old nearly — paper I picked up in one of the 
lodgers’ rooms. I concluded to let your mother 
get a good start and then have it out with 
you.” 

“We came home to tell you,” said Myra. 
“We are nearly killed keeping it; and we’ve 
looked everywhere and we can’t find a thing to 


320 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


do ; and we ’ve nearly used up our shoes tramp- 
ing after work.” 

“You poor dear souls!” cried Miss Nancy. 
“A’n’t this a cruel hard world for young folks ! 
People ought to be born fifty years old, to say 
the least, and then made to stay in the country.” 

“ Delia never said a word about it, did she ? 
She is washing dishes in a restaurant and get- 
ting her meals and two dollars a week. Perhaps 
we ’ll have to come to that,” said Myra ruefully. 

Van shook her heartily. “ Do n’t talk that 
way ! What would the good people near Poplar 
Rise think if ‘Adam’s daughters’ came to that?” 

“ Well, Van,” said Myra, “ I hope for better 
work, and I don’t know that we are made so 
that we could stand all day in a reeking, under- 
ground kitchen, washing dishes and listening to 
the cook swear, varied by the swearing of the 
restaurant keeper. But whatever we have to 
do, I mean to try and remember that there is no 
sense at all in feeling humiliated, degraded, 
ashamed, disgraced by anything that does not 
concern character; what I am myself, not what I 
am forced to do to earn a living, is what is going 
to look large to me, and He knoweth the way 
that I take.” 

“ Yes, yes, children,” said Miss Nancy, toss- 
ing one vest on the table and picking up an- 
other, “ there was One who said, ‘ I am among 


THE HEGIRA OF UNCLE JAMES. 32 1 

you as he that serveth.’ After such a stoop as 
that, there ’s none of us can reckon we stoop 
at all, whatever we do. You can’t make button- 
holes, can you, girls ?” 

“ No,” said Van ; “ it seems as if we can’t do 
anything that is wanted. I can make very poor 
paper flowers and silk embroidery.” 

I can crochet after a fashion,” said Myra, 
whose ivory needle was flying. If I work all 
day I may finish this thing they call a ‘ fascina- 
tor,’ and will get thirty-five cents for it.” 

The Milbury maids were at a great disad- 
vantage in that they knew nothing of many of 
the great movements and associations of the 
city. At home Uncle Daniel had taken an 
agricultural journal with a domestic and story 
department, the weekly paper of the county, 
had bought, in times of special excitement, 
a copy or so of the New York “Tribune” 
or “ Herald,” and had regularly subscribed for a 
missionary journal and a temperance monthly. 
He thought his family very well furnished with 
current literature. 

But these papers left the girls without a hint 
of the great philanthropic undertakings of the 
day especially for women. The Consolidated 
Charities, at the office of which aid is rendered 
in securing work for strangers; the Women’s 
Christian Association, with its offices ; the Wo- 


A(luia’8 Daughtera. 


21 


322 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


men’s Educational and Industrial Union, were 
unknown to them. They had never heard the 
names of good women in the city whose social 
position placed them where their aid was effi- 
cient, whose hearts would be ready to hear a 
sister’s story, and whose hands would be ready 
to give aid to her. 

And though Miss Nancy Tempest had lived 
over thirty years in the city, she had been in 
such fear of being patronized or made an object 
of charity that she had kept as assiduously to 
herself as a snail to its shell. She plodded on in 
her own honest, difficult way, getting poorer 
each year, doing many an act of charity, and 
carefully shutting herself away from those who, 
given opportunity to know her, might have 
loved and respected her. Miss Nancy could 
only tell the girls of the old wornout paths of 
labor, and warn them with pathos to be very 
careful where they went, and not to answer 
advertisements in a reckless fashion. 

The night after their mother left Van and 
Myra counted up their capital ; they had three 
dollars and twenty cents, and rent paid for 
seven weeks. That was all. 


A GOOD FIGHT. 


323 


CHAPTER XX. 

A GOOD FIGHT. 

“ Doth thy heart stir within thee at the sight 
Of orchard blooms upon the mossy bough ? 

Doth their sweet household smile waft back the glow 
Of childhood’s morn, the wondering fresh delight 
In earth’s new coloring, then all strangely bright ?” 

Now were Van and Myra in a hand-to-hand 
struggle for bread. They had thought they 
were poor that first year after Uncle Aaron’s 
death when they were in the country, but what 
was that poverty when compared with this? 
The little cottage had cost far less than these 
three dismal rooms, and what fine sunshine and 
sweet air, what openness and cheer of surround- 
ings, that cottage had ! They looked back to it 
now as to a little Eden from which, by their 
own folly, they had been banished. True, as a 
cottage it was a prettier study for a painter than 
particularly commodious as an abode ; but oh to 
have it back, all sweet and sunny, all their own ! 

“ Here,” sighed Myra, “ everything costs 
money ! Look at the kindling ! five cents for a 
little bundle which Miss Nancy can make do for 
two mornings, but I can hardly light a fire with 
it, it is so little ! In the country we could pick 


324 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


Up kindling anywhere ; as for fuel, I look at 
every good lump of coal as if it were gold, it is- 
such a price. How cheap wood was at home, 
and Uncle Daniel would at any time bring us 
half a cord for nothing ! When I see poor little 
youngsters trotting about the streets carrying 
armfuls of bits of wood and rubbish to burn, I 
think of the quantities of better fuel rotting in 
our woodlands, or burned in the brush-heaps 
every spring, and here it would cost so dear.” 

“ Nothing is cheap here but human sorrow,” 
said poor Van, looking anxiously at her thin, 
fast-shrinking purse. “ Did you ever hear of 
meat being so dear ? and potatoes, and all kinds 
of vegetables ? The price is way up. As for but- 
ter, we haven’t thought of tasting that since 
mother went away ; and, Myra, we are at the last 
milk-ticket and we can’t afford any more ; we 
must do without milk.” 

“ Small loss,” said Myra ; “ the milk is so 
poor I don’t yearn for it. When I think how 
much sweet milk and rich buttermilk we gave 
in the country to the very pigs ! and now we 
can’t have as good for ourselves.” 

“ Uncle Daniel, I know, thought we were 
just like the prodigal in the parable, when we 
gathered up all we had and came into a far 
country. But I ’m sure, for one thing, we have n’t 
spent our money on riotous living. How we have 


A GOOD FIGHT. 


325 


counted every cent and thought twice before 
spending it ; how we have economized, even in 
food !” 

But we have come to the prodigal’s end,” 
said Myra, envying the very pigs, and think- 
ing how the hired help in the country have 
better rooms, more light, air, food, fuel, than we 
can get.” 

“I wonder,” said Van, “that I hadn’t heard 
that parable preached on often enough to be a 
warning to me in my life conduct.” 

“ Unluckily, Van, the preaching is done by 
men, and you don’t admit that they can give 
girls or women any particularly good advice. 
You toss their books into corners,” said Myra 
dryly. 

“Why will you bring that up,” said Van 
between laughing and crying ; “ I reckon that 
then I had a deal more self-confidence than I 
have now. But oh, Myra, how it all comes back 
to me — that great garret so sunny and sweet- 
smelling, the fields waving on every side, the 
music in the poplars, the flowers in the garden, 
the singing of the birds, the hum of the bees ; 
such plenty, such peace ; good Uncle Aaron, so 
proud of us and so kind ; mother, the pattern 
and adviser and centre of her whole neighbor- 
hood ! Oh, Myra, we did n’t dream how for- 
tunate and happy we were !” 


326 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ No, Van, we did n’t ; we took it all as a mat- 
ter of course. As I looked into my Bible this 
morning for a verse for the day, I saw this, 
‘ Behold thou hast been in Eden, the garden of 
God,’ and I thought that we had sure enough — 
a real little Eden.” 

^‘And we have behaved just like Lot, who for 
the sake of gain went to live in Sodom ! Can 
we ever be forgiven for our folly ?” cried Van. 

God remembered Lot even in Sodom, and 
sent angels there to him. Perhaps angels are 
on their way to us. At all events God can bring 
us good even out of our errors. You know ‘ He 
maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, and 
the remainder he will restrain.’ Who knows? 
our Father may lead us back to Eden when our 
lessons are learned.” 

Yes, they had lived in a sweet and homely 
Eden of plenty and safety and neighborly kind- 
ness. Sometimes when they had read of mil- 
lionaires, of summers at Saratoga, of winters in 
Florida, of trips to Europe, they had counted 
themselves poor. They had been sure they 
were poor in the little brown house, but what 
was that poverty to this? At home! They 
never thought of calling this shabby den a 
home. Home was in the country, with its 
friendly faces, words, and deeds. 

Even if they had become very poor and 


A GOOD FIGHT. 


327 


shabby, no one at home would have thought 
the less of them for that. They had been in- 
vited as before to all the social gatherings, the 
picnics, sleigh-rides, barn-parties ; at church how 
many cordial hands had grasped theirs ; how 
many invitations to tea, to rides, to church so- 
ciables had multiplied to them! And these 
recreations had been dear to their hearts. They 
had enjoyed croquet and lawn-tennis as much as 
any girls, and had been leaders when conun- 
drum parties, tableaux, or soap-bubble parties 
had come off. 

When their fortunes had fallen lowest did 
any one guess it that first this neighbor and 
then that came with the little kindly offering ? — 
a pie, “because it was so nice,” a cake, “be- 
cause one too many had been baked,” a roll of 
butter, “ just to show what I can do,” a string 
of sausages, “because, Mrs. Milbury, I want you 
to see that I am nearly as good a hand at sau- 
sages as you are.” 

These were of the offices of humanity and 
the amenities of life in the home which they 
had so lightly abandoned. Now Miss Nancy 
Tempest was their only friend. Perhaps that 
was their own fault for not trying to make 
friends, but it is very hard for poor and sensi- 
tive people to thrust themselves upon those who 
seem to be more fortunately circumstanced. 


328 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


Miss Nancy was kindness itself, but she was so 
worn, so pinched, so despondent, so homesick 
for the scenes and fashions of her youth, that 
the girls had nearly as much heart-ache for Miss 
Nancy’s troubles as for their own. As for other 
people, what cold stares often met their faded 
gowns and the bonnets dismal from many an 
unexpected wetting, as they had trudged through 
the wintry city seeking work. How hard were 
the pavements to feet accustomed to turf and 
springy roadsides, and now aching in badly 
worn shoes. How often their feet were wet, 
their skirts draggled ; what miserable colds 
Myra had — Myra who had always seemed so 
healthy. At market or grocery what open scorn 
on the faces of trades-people at the meagre, mis- 
erable purchases which were yet so heavy for 
their diminishing means. 

“ I 'm afraid we '11 come to the soup-kitchen 
and the free bread and coal distribution,” said 
Myra with a burst of tears. 

I '11 die first !” cried Van, the proud Mil- 
bury maid. 

“ You are right about it,” said Myra, sobbing. 
‘‘We are not to forget what is due to our father’s 
honorable name. Our people have always paid 
their way and been honest. Uncle James was 
not any of our blood ; he was only make-believe 
kin.” 


A GOOD FIGHT. 


329 


Then the two took “ a good cry ” together. 
It was not often they cried, except perhaps at 
night when they none of them had anything to 
do, or Miss Nancy’s eyes were too poor to make 
button-holes, and they all crept early to bed to 
save fire and lights. 

Oil such occasions Miss Nancy had to lie 
awake in wrapper and slippers until her last 
lodger was in. This wakefulness at night was 
a great grievance to Miss Nancy. “ To think,” 
she would say, “ how lovely it was at home when 
I was a girl. I used to go to bed before candle- 
light often, and the windows were open and 
honeysuckles grew about them and made the 
air so sweet as I lay in bed and saw the stars 
shine through the leaves. Then in the morn- 
ing we were up early, and the dew sparkled on 
the grass, the sky was full of splendid colors, 
and my morning-glory vines were full of colored 
bells waving in the wind. Oh if I could only 
go to bed at seven or eight once more, it would 
make a new woman of me !” 

One evening Sadie came in ; it was about the 
end of February. “ I ’ve come to say good-by, 
you were all so good to me,” said Sadie ; “ I ’d 
have been dead by now if you had not helped 
me. I ’m going away. I ’m going to live in the 
country. You all said so much about the 
country and how nice and safe and healthy it is, 


330 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

that I ’m going to try it. I ’m going to live with 
a nice old market-woman. I met her in the 
market as I went there to get things for my 
cousin, and she said I looked delicate and ought 
to live in the country, and I said I wished I 
could. So we talked it over, and she offered to 
give me a dollar and a quarter a week to live 
with her. It is not much, but 1 11 have no ex- 
pense for washing or living; I am to be just like 
one of the family and have a good room to my- 
self, and once a month I am to come to town 
with the market-wagon for the day. I think 1 11 
like it. As for the money, I never had a dollar 
and a quarter a week just for clothes in my 
life.” 

“You’ve got good sense,” said Miss Nancy; 
“ I wish all girls had as good, and there wouldn’t 
be as many shop and factory girls left in the 
city, and what were left would stand at a pre- 
mium and be better treated.” 

Van and Myra had seen none of the other 
girls of their shop but Sadie and Delia since 
Uncle James departed. 

“ I ’ll tell you what you ’d better do, girls,” 
said Miss Nancy, soon after their mother left. 
“ Furnished rooms bring twice as much as un- 
furnished. Suppose you rent the rooms fur- 
nished, and then you may come in with me and 
will be at no expense except your share of the 


A GOOD FIGHT. 


331 


fuel and light. I would n’t take that from you 
if I could help it. And when the time you have 
paid for is up, you can just pay me for the 
rooms and keep the difference you get on 
your furniture. Every little helps in a tight 
place.” 

“ But how could we sleep ?” asked Myra. 

“ One of you could sleep with me, and you 
could bring your lounge into my sitting-room 
and one of you sleep on that. Or I ’ll sleep on 
the lounge and give you two the bed — I do n’t 
care.” 

“ Well, you are the kindest ! You remind me 
what it says in the Bible of the ^ riches of the 
liberality ’ of some who were really poor,” said 
Myra. “You must come of the family of the 
woman who gave the two mites — all she had.” 

So once more on the wall of the corner house 
was pinned a strip of paper written, not now 
in Miss Tempest’s old-style cramped hand, but 
in Van’s broad script, and on it “ Three Fur- 
nished Rooms to Let at No. 8 Aspen Square — 
Suitable for Housekeeping.” The time must 
have been unfavorable, or Aspen Square, sun- 
less, with its doddered black tree, its broken 
sidewalk, its gutter running full with mud, soap- 
suds, refuse, did not attract a house-hunting 
public. Only two or three ventured to No. 8 to 
inspect the three furnished rooms, and none of 


332 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


these seemed struck with the bargain. “Too 
dark.” “ Wanted more beds.” “ Rooms too 
small.” So no tenants sub-let Van’s appart- 
ments, and the ‘ Milbury maids ’ held the ineligi- 
ble quarters still. 

“ Don’t fret about the rent,” said Miss Nancy, 
“ for I lose nothing by your keeping the rooms 
till some one offers, at least. And on the paper 
was written, “Three Rooms, Furnished or Un- 
furnished, etc.” 

Myra wrote a very good hand, and after 
haunting offices until she was ashamed to be 
seen in them, she by dint of persistence obtained 
some copying to do now and then. There was 
a very good offer of salary made by a literary 
lady who wanted an amanuensis and reader. 
She seemed interested in what Miss Nancy told 
her of the country sisters, and perhaps one' of 
them might have had the place, but neither of 
them understood any French for the words and 
phrases constantly in use ; also they were un- 
able to pronounce the scientific words in general 
use in works on botany, geology, or other of the 
natural sciences. 

“ Why did n’t we study harder, go to school 
longer, get better educated?” groaned Van. 
“Why didn’t we know something well — even 
how to read?” 

“ Miss Nancy told me to-day not to fret; she 


A GOOD FIGHT. 333 

would make more button-holes and share her 
last cent with us ; and that poor dear Delia told 
me she owed all the comfort she had to us, and 
she ’d share her wages with us,” sobbed Myra. 
“ I declare. Van, it is just like the early Chris- 
tians who had all things in common. It is a 
comfort in our troubles to see what hearts of 
gold the Lord has in the world, and I know 
there are thousands more, if we could only find 
them, or they knew how to find us. The 
brotherhood spirit must be in the church 
yet.” 

The papers which Myra copied were a poor 
enough recourse. Bending over a table in the 
dim light of her own or Miss Nancy’s room, her 
fingers often stiff and blue with cold and the un- 
accustomed work of holding a pen for hours at 
a time, by hard toil all day she could earn forty, 
even fifty cents! She was not a rapid scribe. 
But she was not able to get copying for over 
one or two days in a week. 

The crochet- work was giving out. The ware- 
house did not want too large a stock of these 
wool goods for the summer weather. Much of 
this kind of work was now on hand. Twenty or 
thirty cents a day Myra made for a time, and 
then there was no more of that employment. 
She tried a slop-shop and asked for flannel shirts 
to make by hand. 


334 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


What ! no machine ! The shirts are eight 
cents each all done, and you can’t make over 
two a day by hand, sure.” 

“ That will be better than nothing ; I have 
no machine,” said Myra. 

“ Well, you can try half a dozen. Where is 
your money for security ?” 

“ What security?” inquired Myra. 

“ For the goods. We can’t risk losing our 
goods, having strangers sell them or pawn them 
and never come back,” replied the shop- 
woman. 

Myra’s face crimsoned painfully — her eyes 
filled with tears. The forewoman was not hard- 
hearted and she pitied the girl. 

“We have to do it, child,” she said more 
gently ; “a rule is a rule, and you ’d be amazed 
if you knew what ways of tricking there are 
in this world. You’re from the country I’ll 
venture.” 

“Yes; and I don’t know anything about 
trickery.” 

“ Be careful then, or you ’ll get victimized 
somehow. In the cities the bad ones and the 
tricky ones make their living, leaving the here- 
after out of their account.” 

“I have only sixty cents,” said poor Myra, 
looking at the flannel shirts done up six in a 
bundle. 


A GOOD FIGHT. 


335 


“ Well, there, I ’ll let you have the bundle 
and take the risk outside of that. I know 
you ’re all right. Dear me, what danger you ’re 
in.” 

“ Could n’t you tell me what to take care of, 
or be afraid of ?” said Myra, who in point of fact 
had been afraid of everything she saw in the 
city above the size of a six-year-old child. “ I 
live in terror of I do n’t know what snares and 
pitfalls.” 

“Well, look out for advertisements that 
promise much and end in only meaning harm 
to you some way. All these extraordinary 
promises mean cheating. They do have a so- 
ciety that looks after these things, and warns 
the women, and prosecutes ; but they have their 
hands full, there are so many ways of deceiving. 
Why I ’ve known girls to be cheated out of 
their trunks and their last cent with promises 
of a splendid situation, and they to hand over 
the money for a ticket, and their trunk to be 
checked, and they left standing half a day cry- 
ing in a station, while Blackleg, he or she, had 
made off with the money. Oh this is a hard 
.world !” 

Thus February passed, and Miss Tempest 
was complaining of feeling very ill. “ Every 
bone in me aches. I ’m so stiff I can hardly 
move. I know I ’m in for a siege of rheumatic 


336 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


fever. I can hardly see with pain in my head. 
First shivers and then heat. My hands tremble 
so I can’t set a stitch. Promise me, girls, make 
me a solemn promise, you ’ll not send me to a 
hospital.” 

“ But, Miss Nancy, they say they are so much 
better — ” 

“Van Milbury, hush ! You do n’t know what 
you are talking of. I have held my own, such 
as it is, and I wont go to a pauper ward. Let 
me die first. Promise you ’ll keep me here.” 

“ Yes, yes,” said Myra, “so we will, and nurse 
you our best, too.” 

“I don’t know how we ’ll get on,” groaned 
Miss Tempest, between pain and anxiety. 
“ There are the rooms to take care of and wash 
for. And the lodgers’ rent just pays my rent, 
fuel, gas, and water-rates. All my clothes and 
food and extras I get out of the button-holes, 
and when I can’t do those ” — 

Delia had stood by the stove drying her feet 
and dress at the oven. She had just come in. 
She spoke up. “ I did n’t tell you before. I ’ve 
been out all day looking for work. I had to 
give up my place as ‘ dish-wash ’ because the 
cook’s niece is just come from Ireland and he 
wanted it for her. So I m out of work just in 
the nick of time. Miss Tempest, you go to bed 
and tell me just what to do for you. I ’ll bring 


A GOOD FIGHT. 


337 


your bed in here ; it will be much better than in 
that little dark room where it is. I ’m strong 
and willing, and I ’ll take care of all the house 
and do the washing just the same as you have, 
and what time I have I ’ll make button-holes to 
bring us in some money for food. I was button- 
holer at Apsley’s and I ’m pretty good at it. I ’ll 
try hard to make them nice.” 

‘'Perhaps I can manage a few,” said Miss 
Nancy. “ What a blessing you are, Delia !” 

“You’ve been like a mother to me/’ said 
Delia. 

“ Bread cast upon the waters. Miss Nancy, 
and found after many days,” said Myra. “ Who 
knows but some other of the' bread will come 
flocking home when you least expect it, and 
make you flourishing ?” 

The girls helped Delia move the bed and 
give Miss Nancy a hot bath and a rub with 
some lotion of her own compounding. But as 
they woke up through the night they heard her 
groaning. They had moved their lounge into 
Miss Nancy’s room for Delia. 

“ I ’m afraid Miss Nancy is going to be very 
sick,” said Myra. 

“I wonder we are not all very sick,” said 
Van, “this house is so dark and dank. The 
cellar is full of water. I know the drains leak. 
I think if the Board of Health did its duty, it 


Adam’s Daughters. 


338 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


would make a visitation and abate this entire 
square as a nuisance and a typhoid - fever 
bed.” 

“ It is not as bad as some places in the city 
by half, and yet people — even babies — live,” said 
Myra. “They live in spite of unsanitary con- 
ditions.” 

“ Our rent is part of what Miss Nancy has to 
pay her rent with,” said Van ; “ one thing is 
sure, we must re-let our rooms, or we must pay 
the rent ourselves, even if we starve. We can- 
not make her destitute.” 

She had walked weary miles and many days 
to find a place to sew with a dressmaker. She 
had secured one finally, as she could run a ma- 
chine rapidly. Wages, a dollar and a half a 
week. 

“Your learning will be worth a fortune to 
you,” said the modiste, “ Most ladies do not pay 
their apprentices at all. And then you get your 
dinner.” 

The dinner was cold tea and dry bread, small 
slices of cheese or mutton being added every 
other day. The boasted learning consisted in 
being sent out on innumerable errands to match 
goods, buy sewing-silk, thread, needles, or but- 
tons, going home with big boxes or bundles of 
work, running a machine, tidying up the work- 
room morning and night. She had a walk of a 


A GOOD FIGHT. 


339 


mile and a half morning and evening and was 
sometimes kept out until late at night, frighten- 
ing Myra nearly to death by her absence. The 
exercise may have been good for health, but it 
was very bad for her shoes, and the first fort- 
night’s wages went in shoes and overshoes. 
Even this poor place was not a permanency. 
Lent was come and work slackened. After 
three weeks Van was told she would not be 
needed any longer. The next morning an ad- 
vertisement for a ‘‘ companion ” met her eye. 
She started to interview the lady at the address 
given. 

“ La !” screamed the maid at the door when 
Van stated her case, you wont do. She wants 
some one stylish, as can sing Italian songs, play 
cards with her, and dress up to the last 
notch !” 


340 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

THE HAND OF MERCY. 

“ What griefs that make no sign, 

That ask no aid but thine, 

Father of mercies ! here before thee swell !” 

Miss Nancy Tempest was now in the midst 
of a rheumatic fever, and fearfully tormented as 
if possessed by a demon. Delia was indefatiga- 
ble in caring for her and for the house and in 
making button-holes. As Van and Myra were 
perforce idle part of the time, they also helped 
nurse Miss Nancy. To conceal their miserable 
poverty, they kept more in their own room, and 
Myra made much of the little copying she found 
to do, and Van never told that 'for her three 
weeks’ work at the dressmaker’s she received 
only the dollar and a quarter that she paid on 
the rent and the money which bought her 
shoes. She was careful however to show her 
shoes. 

That Miss Nancy should not guess how very 
*poor they were was one great object in their 
lives now, and that the home people should not 
know it was another. It sounded well to write 
that Van had a place in a fashionable dress- 
making establishment, and that Myra was doing 


THE HAND OF MERCY. 


341 


copying for a lawyer. When Van was given 
her conge by the fashionable dressmaker they 
failed to report it. 

“ This is going to be a terribly late spring/’ 
said Myra to Van. “ It is the first of March 
and as cold and raw as mid-winter. If only 
warm weather would come we could do better — 
no fuel, no lights to use, food so much cheaper. 
How I long for something fresh out of the 
ground, good fresh vegetables ! Why did n’t we 
rely more on Uncle Daniel’s advice. Van?” 

“We thought less of him because he was 
abrupt and plain in his speech and ways, 
although he was true and kind. Uncle James 
was dapper and smooth-spoken and made in- 
definite large promises ; we thought him much 
nicer than Uncle Daniel, but see what a cruel, 
greedy, scheming, wicked man he was ! I am 
glad he was not our mother’s real brother !” 

“ If we could only get back to the country,” 
said Myra, “ it seems as if I ’d never want to 
leave it again and never want anything again.” 

“ But we cannot get back,” said Van. “ We 
have no money for our railroad fares, and we 
could not pay for moving our few things. Our 
clothes are worse than ever ; we really have noth- 
ing good. We have no money to hire a house, 
and nothing to put in it if we could hire it. We 
will never be able to go back.” 


342 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“O Van, Van, whatever are we coming to!” 
cried poor Myra despairingly. 

“ I see what we might have come to and 
where we have been so wretchedly foolish,” 
said Van. “People who from childhood have 
been used to city life and city ways might get 
on better than we do. If we had had a better 
education we might have fared better. I have 
heard of one young woman who gets an ample 
living canvassing for advertisements for news- 
papers ; a great many girls are employed as 
book-keepers and type-writers. As I lie awake 
at night I see how we might have done better 
in the country. Uncle Daniel was always say- 
ing that we should make our living from the 
ground. O Myra, we might have set ourselves 
to raising fowls, eggs, and fancy birds. We 
could have had canaries and pigeons, kept bees, 
and raised small fruits, mushrooms, and silk- 
worms. There ’s a good sale for all the cocoons 
of silk you can get. They bring a dollar a 
pound, and from Washington they will send 
you eggs and full directions free. If we had 
only had sense and enterprise, and been willing 
to do what was at our hand and that we could 
do ! I see in the stores and markets so many 
things which we could have raised for sale. 
Then at home you and mother could have done 
as much crocheting and knitting as you do here. 


THE HAND OF MERCY. 


343 


and have sent the goods by mail to the shop ; 
they are light ; or they could have been ex- 
pressed once a month.” 

“It is too late now,” said Myra wistfully, 
“ unless we tell Uncle Daniel the whole story. 
And it would break mother’s heart and Teddie’s 
to know how we have suffered.” 

“ It seems as if I can’t tell it to any one,” 
said Van passionately. “ It seems as if there is 
a seal on my lips, a stone on my heart, and I 
cannot speak of what I have gone through. 
And as for Uncle Daniel, you know he is not 
rich. I doubt if he is yet out of debt. I think 
his mortgage is not cleared off ; and his home 
is small, and besides all his big family, he has 
grandma and mother and Aunt Sara Ann’s sis- 
ter there. No, we must not burden Uncle Dan- 
iel with the results of our own obstinacy, or 
rather of mine ; I was the one who planned all 
this coming to the city. We made our bed, as 
they say, and now we must lie on it. It is a 
very hard one, Myra.” 

Yes, it was a very hard bed, and like some 
other poor ones seemed destined to get harder 
every day. To the daily quest for work always 
the same reply, “ Nothing to do,” and the city 
seemed thronged with people looking for em- 
ployment. 

“We are so over-stocked,” said the fore wo- 


344 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


man of the “ knit goods warehouse ” to Myra, 
“that really we dare not give you any more 
work. I ’m very sorry, for I know you are in a 
strait. You look sick and troubled. It is dread- 
ful hard to be poor. I have all I can do to make 
both ends meet for myself and my old mother. 
I wish I could think of something for you.” 

“ Everybody says the times are so hard,” 
sighed Myra. 

“ They ’re always hard in these over-crowded 
Eastern cities. I don’t know what they are in 
the West. Just as bad, I suppose. I wonder 
that women will come from the plenty, quiet, 
safety, respectability of the country to swell the 
wretched crowds in the city. Now I was born 
in the city. If it had n’t been that I found myself 
here, when working days began for me, I war- 
rant I would n’t have come here. I’d go West 
now, only for my old infirm mother. Why 
did n’t you go West ?” 

“Why didn’t I stay where I was?” said 
Myra. 

“If those born in the country would stay 
there and work, the ones born in the city and 
bound to stay there would have a better chance 
of work and better wages. But I reckon you 
did what you thought was right.” 

“ I fear we did what we wanted to, and did 
not pray over our plans and take counsel of 


THE HAND OF MERCY. 345 

God,” said Myra. “We are learning late that 
God is willing to guide us every day in little 
things and great, if we will be guided. Just 
now I suppose we are eating the fruit of our 
doings so that we shall not be so headstrong in 
the days to come.” 

She went languidly home to Miss Nancy. 
Delia was gone for more vests to distinguish 
with button-holes. She had pulled down the 
blinds on account of her patient’s weak eyes, 
and Miss Nancy was lying alone in the gloom, 
seemingly watched by the big white horse’s 
head in the picture bequeathed by the late Mr. 
Dotter. The white horse stared from the wall, 
the white face of Miss Nancy stared back from 
the bed. 

“How are you. Miss Nancy?” asked Myra, 
dropping into a chair and leaning against the 
bed. She was so weak and so breathless ; she 
felt like lying down and never stirring again. 

“ I was thinking,” said Miss Nancy, “ that 
things might be worse. Suppose I had n’t De- 
lia, or that Delia was not such a good girl. If 
she was a girl to be shiftless, or go snooping 
’round and gossip with the lodgers, what a case 
I ’d be in ! But Delia is that good and hard- 
working and grateful ! Myra child, you look 
sick. You ought to be back where you were a 
year ago, among green fields and kind friends. 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


346 

Why did you ever think of leaving a place where 
you were so well off ?” 

“ The answer is as I found it in a poem called 
* The Letter L.’ 

“ ‘ It may be so, for then,’ said he, 

‘ I was — a fool.’ 

And like other fools, Miss Nancy, I ’m learning 
a hard lesson.” 

“Where is Van for this two days?” asked 
Miss Nancy. 

“She — has work, waiting — in a restaurant. 
She only gets a dollar and a half, as she is a be- 
ginner,” said Myra, flushing. 

But that night Myra was very ill and deli- 
rious, and the next day Van could not go to her 
restaurant, but must stay at home and nurse her 
sister. She went for the “ poor doctor,” as the 
people in the neighborhood called him, not as 
denoting ignorance of his profession, but that 
the city paid for his services to the poor. She 
received medicine as a dole from the public dis- 
pensary. This was bitter enough for Van. She 
thought of the country, of the genial “ family 
doctor,” also one of their church elders, who had 
a good word for the soul as well as the body, and 
who came as friend as well as physician. And 
then, what a nurse the mother had been, and 
how ready all the neighbors were with helpful 
offices ! \ 


THE HAND OF MERCY. 


347 


The two sisters had striven gallantly with 
adverse fate, and now at last they seemed finally 
conquered. That first night after Myra was 
taken ill Van sat by her dying morsel of fire 
and “counted up what she had.” 

Van’s habit of counting up her money had 
been, in more prosperous days, a family joke. 
She had a fashion of dividing her funds into 
portions, each designated to a particular use, 
and would never by any stress of circumstances 
be driven to take from one part of her hoard 
to fill up a deficiency in another. When Van 
would get out her pocket-book and begin to tell 
out little piles of bills and silver from the various 
divisions of the book. Uncle Aaron and the mo- 
ther and the girls would begin to laugh. And 
what pleasure Uncle Aaron had taken on such 
occasions in dropping a dollar, or a quarter, or a 
half-dollar upon one of the little heaps of treas- 
ure, secretly, to bring Van’s calculations wrong, 
or openly and boldly avowing that this especial 
heap was under his particular patronage. Good 
Uncle Aaron, how faithfully he had loved 
Adam’s daughters, and ruined them at last, by 
forgetting that his Book was a safe business 
guide ! 

These thoughts, these tender memories, came 
to Van as she sat taking account of her fortunes 
while Myra, sleeping in virtue of an opiate. 


348 ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 

tossed and moaned on her pillow. Rent paid 
up till April first. Fuel enough to last the 
month of March out. In cash, fifty cents. 
Nothing to do." The sick sister to nurse and 
provide for. Van had need to be stout-hearted. 
This was a dismal outlook. Most of that fifty 
cents went for little things for Myra, for Myra 
was the one to be deceived now, and Van kept a 
brave face and bought an orange or a lemon, or a 
little ice to put on the burning head, and tried to 
turn Myra’s wandering thoughts from the ques- 
tion of finances. Now and then, when Delia 
could sit with Myra for a while. Van would take 
an hour to look for work which she could do at 
home ; fiannel shirts at eight cents each, overalls 
for the same price, were not to be despised. But 
she was not a regular hand, and was met by the 
remark, “No more work. Times are hard now." 
Poor soul, who knew better than she did that 
times were hard ? Finally Van resolved that if 
by the end of the week relief did not come she 
would write the whole story to Uncle Daniel 
and ask him if she might sell off her little furni- 
ture, buy tickets with the proceeds, and come 
with Myra to his house. She well knew what 
the reply would be, as well as if the uncle were 
instead her father. He, like the father in Scrip- 
ture, would wait for her, seeing her afar off, and 
run to meet her, give her a kiss of welcome and 


THE HAND OF MERCY. 


349 

all the best that his house afforded. And not 
one of the six cousins would complain ! 

During this crucial week the “ Milbury maids ’’ 
lived on two cents a day. Myra lay quietly in 
bed, her fever broken, and ate without a word 
the little boiled rice or the slice of toasted bread 
without butter which Van prepared for her. 
Van ate boiled potatoes with salt, or corn-meal 
mush without any condiment. The corn-meal 
cost two cents a pound ; a pound lasted Van 
over two days ; she bought potatoes for a cent a 
pound, and a pound was all she ate in a day ; 
not that she thrived or felt strong on this bill of 
fare, but — she lived. 

, “Van,” said Delia to her one evening, when 
Myra and Miss Nancy slept, “have you tried 
the Young Women’s Christian Association Em- 
ployment Office ?” 

“ Did n’t know there was such a place,” said 
Van. “Up in the country the Young Women’s 
Christian Association don’t have anything like 
that. I do n’t know exactly what they do have ; 
I never took much interest in it some way. I 
seemed to feel as if everybody was comfortable, 
and no one needed anything to be done for 
her. But I fancy the truth was I was idle and 
selfish and did not want to do my fair share of 
church work. It sounds as if it ought to be 
something real good. Do you know what it is, 


350 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


Delia ? What do they offer you, what do they 
ask of you ?” 

“I do n’t know much about it, but I ’ve seen 
a sign up in a street not far from here, and I 
mean to go there when Miss Nancy gets so I can 
look for work again. The book-keeper at the 
restaurant where I washed dishes is a very nice 
young lady. She was very kind to me, and I 
know she thought it was not fair that 1 should 
be turned off so the cook’s niece should be taken 
on. To-day I met her— the book-keeper, you 
know — as I was going to the dispensary for cam- 
phor for Miss Nancy. She asked me all about 
what I was doing and so on, and said I was a 
good girl and for me to go to the Young Wo- 
men’s Christian Association to look for work 
when Miss Nancy was better. She said she got 
her situation through them. She said they were 
all so kind and so interested in you, and tried so 
much to help you, and did n’t ask any fees. It 
sounds as if it ought to be nice — ‘ Christian ’ and 
' young women ’ and ‘ association ;’ it sounds 
good, do n’t it?” 

Van began to remember how in happier days 
she had said she “ did n’t want to belong to the 
Young Women’s Christian Association she 
“ couldn’t see any use in it.” It struck her that 
she had been rather a captious and hard-headed 
young woman ; she repudiated the idea that 


THE HA.ND OF MERCY. 


351 


ministers or other men could tell her what was 
suitable for young women to do ; and when her 
sister-women undertook to solve some of the 
problems in the case, she would have none of 
them either ! She concluded that she would go 
to the place which Delia described to her and 
see if her sisters of the city had any helpful ad- 
vice to give her. 

As a stranger to the city’s good as well as ill, 
she had known absolutely nothing of the work- 
ings of the Young Women’s Christian Associ- 
ation ; and having in the country sedulously 
kept herself apart from its work, she knew noth- 
ing of its aims and ramifications. Once Van 
Milbury had not realized that young women 
needed any helping or any association for mu- 
tual aid and protection. Well, Van Milbury was 
learning something. 

The next morning she told Myra that she 
was going out on an errand, and gave her a lit- 
tle bell to ring for Delia if she needed anything. 

As she turned out of Aspen Square she met 
the doctor. He was tearing along as usual, as 
if his day had not half enough hours in it, but 
he stopped, seeing Van. 

“ How is your sister ?” 

‘‘She has no fever, but she looks so very 
weak ; she is so wasted.” 

“Any appetite ?” 


352 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


Van flushed and stammered. She did not 
know whether Myra had any appetite or not. 
She had not experimented upon it. 

“She needs good nourishing food — cream, 
fresh beef, fresh eggs, a few raw oysters. Those 
rooms you ’re in are not healthful for you. Few 
cheap rooms are fit to live in. There ’s a lack 
of sunlight and chance for ventilation. Drain- 
age is bad. You ought to go to the country.” 

The doctor hurried along and Van moved on 
her way, resolving to get Uncle Daniel to send 
for Myra, and she would continue her fight for 
bread alone. But would Myra, who understood 
it all so well, who had been so fully behind the 
scenes, permit that ? 

It was rather early in the morning and few 
had reached the office of the Christian Associa- 
tion. Van went in and quietly asked the secre- 
tary for work. She had no references but her 
landlady ; she knew no regular work. As the 
secretary questioned her, it seemed that there 
was nothing which she could do but a little 
hand-sewing, or she could run a machine, if 
some one supplied the machine. 

“ Really,” said the secretary, “ we have so 
many applying — and there is so little work de- 
manded just now — and the lack of city refer- 
ence, you see. I may hear of something soon. 

I hope I shall. You might leave your name, 


THE HAND OF MERCY. 353 

but I don’t think of anything at all for you to- 
day.” 

Her last hope was gone. Van’s resolution 
and calm gave way. 

“ I ’d — I ’d take anything — housework, cham- 
ber-work, anything,” said poor Van, clinging to 
the desk, she was so faint and weak and her 
head reeled so, and then she burst into tears. 
The secretary looked at her keenly. She had 
held her place a number of years and was 
shrewd. The neatness, the good material, the 
nice fit of Van’s well-worn clothes, the refined 
air, the soft voice, the thin white face, the wasted 
well-shaped hands, the quivering nerves, the 
heavy dark lines under the eyes, all told the 
story to her experience. She came out from be- 
hind the desk, took Van gently by the arm, 
marched her into the next room, placed her at 
a little table, and said, “ Waiter, a good break- 
fast, quick !” 

Van could not stop to reflect that this was 
the first meal ever served out to her by charity. 
The aroma of the coffee, the homelike look of 
the nice bread and butter, the appetizing odor 
of the steak and potato-cakes — there was no re- 
sisting them. Van found that she had an excel- 
lent appetite herself, whether Myra had or not. 
Besides, she had not had so good a meal for 
over two months. That was hard on a girl used 

23 


Adam’s Daugiitui's. 


354 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


all her life to mamma Milbury’s admirable cook- 
ing. She ate and was refreshed. 

She had no words wherewith to thank the 
secretary for that breakfast. She returned to 
the desk and, speechless, looked at her. A little 
color was creeping into her wan face, her eyes 
were brighter, her drooping figure erected itself. 
She was Van once more. 

“ Give me your address," said the secretary. 
‘^You say you are from the country and have 
only been six months in the city. I do not know 
but I have thought of something for you. I will 
see. Go back home and do n’t go out again to- 
day ; I may send you word. Your sister is sick 
you told me ? This has been a very sickly sea- 
son. You do n’t look well yourself.’’ 

If I could get something to do,’’ said Van, 
“ I should soon be all right. I am naturally 
very strong. There is nothing the matter with 
me but hard times and worry.’’ 

“We all have our share of those,’’ said the 
secretary, “ and in the end even those may do 
us good. When we can say to God, ‘Thou 
hast known my soul in adversity/ we shall do 
well.’’ 

Van felt brighter and better as she went into 
the street. How much she wished she had 
always belonged to the Young Women’s Chris- 
tian Association ! She had five cents in her 


THE HAND OF MERCY. 


355 


pocket. She bought a little milk-biscuit of yes- 
terday’s baking for a cent and two oysters for 
four cents. The man opened the oysters for her 
and Van carried them very carefully in their 
shells round the corner into Aspen Square. She 
spread a quilt over the big rocking-chair, bathed 
Myra’s face and arms, did her hair beautifully, 
put her wrapper on her, bolstered her up in the 
chair with her feet on the stove, and gave her 
the two oysters and the biscuit for her dinner, 
arranging them as nicely as she could on plate 
and napkin. She was cheery and she made 
Myra cheery. 

That afternoon, while Myra still sat in her 
chair. Van, like the widow of Sarepta, was ba- 
king a little cake of the last left meal. Pres- 
ently she heard a deep sigh from her sister. 

“ You feel weak, dear,” she said. I wish I 
had something nice to give you.” 

“I wasn’t thinking of my food. Van, but of 
that verse about the unjust steward: ‘I cannot 
dig ; to beg I am ashamed.’ How many of us 
are in just that case !” 

‘‘ For my part,” said Van, “ I feel as if I ’d 
like nothing better than to dig, if only I had 
some rich, well-sunned ground to dig in ! I be- 
lieve I could dig to profit.” 


356 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

“ALL YE ARE BRETHREN.” 

“ What might be done if men were wise ; 

What glorious deeds, my suffering brother, 

Would they unite, in love and right. 

And cease their scorn of one another.” 

Myra was silent for a few minutes. Van 
put her little corn-cake on the stove to bake. 
She had had an excellent breakfast at nine, but 
now it was three, and, unfortunately, she was 
hungry again ! 

“ Van,” said Myra softly, “ you need n’t think 
you deceive me. You and mother and I came 
here and kept our poverty secret from Teddie 
and Uncle Daniel ; then we sent mother away, 
and you and I have hidden our miseries from 
her. But you need n’t think you can deceive 
me! You have trusted to my feeling too sick to 
notice, but I have seen all. Where are the 
things which you do n’t want me to know are 
missing? At the pawnbroker’s my poor, dear, 
kind sister ! The clock, the tray with the big 
glass pitcher, the silk pillow we had made for 
the lounge — you carried them off at night while 
I slept! It was a hard experience for you, my 


'‘ALL YE ARE BRETHREN.” 357 

proud Van. I hope we have clothes enough left 
to look for work in.” 

Van stood ovei-whelmed. This was all true, 
and Myra also had carried the burden which she 
had thought to bear alone ! Happily Delia came 
in with a letter with the home postmark. It 
was from Cousin Ben. "We all miss you so 
much. Aunt Margaret looks so anxious when- 
ever we speak of you that we feel sure you are 
not really thriving or happy in the city, and that 
you are not well and strong there as you were 
here. Why don’t you come back? The little 
brown house is vacant still. Father says he is 
sure you would do better there than where you 
are. Father says if you are wise you will seek 
your living from the ground. The earth is a 
generous mother, and when her children go to 
her for bread she does not send them empty 
away. She is liberal like her Maker. Father 
says if you’ll come back and take the little 
brown house and the acre that is about it, we 
will plough and lay it out for you, and you can 
get here by the time seeds begin to come up, for 
the season is late this year. Come home, girls ; 
we all want you, and I ’m sure you want us.” 

Over this letter the sisters spent a plentiful 
rain of tears, and were in the midst of this show- 
er when Delia returned conducting a lady — a 
lady not so old as their mother, a lady who 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


358 

looked as if the world had gone well with her, 
or as if she had the happy alchemy which finds 
good in all things, and brings from basest met- 
als — gold. Not an imposing and fashionable 
lady, but with the delicate air of the city’s very 
best refinement and culture, one of those who 
create their home wherever they are, even for a 
few moments, and draw instant confidence. 

There are some people whose souls are like 
the sea ; they receive the overflowing fulness of 
the sorrows of other souls, which emptied into 
the depth of their silence and strength, if it ever 
comes forth again, returns in other forms, in the 
guise of gracious dews and showers of ministry. 
Such a soul was this which met Van and Myra 
in the deepest of their misery, and into which, 
to their own amazed relief, they poured their 
whole story. That dreadful week was ended, 
and with it ended the period of their direst trib- 
ulations. 

“No wonder you find it easy to be good and 
strong and helpful,” said an admiring but super- 
ficial friend one day to Mrs. Arden ; “ you have 
found the world always going well with you and 
have never had any trouble.” 

“lam glad indeed if I am helpful,” said Mrs. 
Arden, no shade falling over her steadfast face. 
But who knew better than did she that it is only 
in sorrow’s garden we gather the herb called 


“ALL YE ARE BRETHREN.'’ 359 

sympathy? In this world it happens that the 
people to whom others are always drawn to tell 
everything, themselves tell nothing. It is this 
very capacity for silence that secures confidence. 

If twenty-four hours before this visitor came 
to their gloomy room any one had told Van 
Milbury that within such a space of time she 
would be sitting on a small stool at a stranger’s 
feet, holding a stranger’s hand, and pouring into 
a stranger’s ear all the story of their loss, their 
struggle, their Uncle James, their entire and 
pitiable defeat, she simply could not have be- 
lieved it. Proud, sensitive, and reticent as she 
was, would she be likely to tell how they had 
been cold, hungry, in the dark, saving up as a 
talisman one small half candle, “ lest anything 
should happen in the night.” For within a fort- 
night the gas had been cut off from No. 8 Aspen 
Square, as poor Miss Nancy could not afford 
longer to pay gas-bills. The lamps of the joint 
household had been handed over to the inexor- 
able lodgers, and bits of tallow candle had suf- 
ficed the sore pressed women on the first floor. 
Did Van think she could ever tell this ? No, not 
to mother or sister or friend, much less to a 
stranger. But there, the secret was told. Mrs. 
Arden from the instant her hand touched theirs 
and her voice entered their ears was no stranger. 
She had drunk deep of the words and spirit of 


36b ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

Christ’s saying, All ye are brethren.” Christ 
proposed that spirit of Christian brotherhood as 
panacea for most of the woes and losses of hu- 
manity. That household spirit of self-forgetting, 
of genial altruism and hourly helpfulness, how 
it would “ smooth the furrows on the front of 
care,” bring hope to the despairing, joy to the 
mourning, strength to the weary, would level up 
humanity ! It should be the constant spirit, the 
natural atmosphere, of the Church of Christ. 

Van wondered much afterward that within 
only thirty minutes of acquaintance she had 
been able to tell this dark-eyed lady with the 
sympathetic face and winning smile all the hid- 
den and bitter secrets of her life. But it all 
came out then, how mother and Teddie never 
knew, but were quite deceived, and supposed 
that the two girls were very busy, so that they 
could only write once in ten days. “ But we 
could not afford envelopes, paper, and stamps 
oftener,” said Myra. 

They even told how they had been living on 
two cents a day. “We have almost had to hurt 
dear mother’s feelings, writing to her not to 
come back before the end of summer,” said Van. 
“We could not have her here starving, and yet 
she feels that she cannot burden our uncle Dan- 
iel. It is awful for a woman of mother’s age to 
find herself with no homd and no support.” 


“ALL YE ARE BRETHREN.” 361 

“ Not that Uncle Daniel for half a minute be- 
grudges our mother anything or feels her a bur- 
den,” said Myra. “ He wants to have her there, 
he asks us All to stay there. He lives in the 
country where everything is plentiful,” and she 
sighed, as if one who had wilfully gone out, and 
shut behind him the crystal - barred Eden-gate, 
would say, “ He lives in Paradise.” 

* Then they gave this new friend Ben’s letter 
to read. 

This conversation, this sudden warm out- 
pouring of Van’s long-sealed heart, had also 
given Myra her enlightenments. Sick and half- 
conscious, she had not really known the depth of 
their destitution, nor realized how much Van 
had taken to the pawn-shop nor how very, very 
little had there been given for the articles which 
they cherished as most precious. Neither had 
Myra known how Miss Nancy Tempest was also 
terribly destitute, now only able to sit up in bed 
after her weary illness. 

Back again came Delia, showing the way to a 
boy with two big baskets. “They are not for 
us ; there is some mkstake,” said Van, as he blun- 
dered through the dark hall, walking “ sidewise 
like a crab,” for convenience of his burden. 

“ Oh they are my baskets, please,” said Mrs. 
Arden. “ That will do, Terry then turning to 
Van, as one asking a favor, she said, “ Wont you 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


362 

get supper now, please, out of the things in the 
basket ? One of them has coal and wood in it. 
And you will let me have a cup of tea ? I have 
been out since eleven.” 

Van felt shy of doing this ; but the hungry 
eyes of the convalescing Myra rebuked her, and 
she hurried to get a comfortable supper. They 
had not had one of their pretty little table-cloths 
with its napkins laid out since New Year’s day. 
The red tray was at the pawn-shop, that was a 
pity ; but how fortunate that the blue Japanese 
tea-pot had been held back ! Van had meant to 
take it off under shelter of the coming night ! 

As Van stirred up the fire, made tea, spread 
out the bread and butter and cold chicken and 
tongue and the raspberry jam, Myra talked to 
the visitor. The secretary had sent a note to 
Mrs. Arden telling her of Van. She knew I 
would come,” said Mrs. Arden ; “it is my hobby 
to look after strangers in the city and —get them 
off out of it as soon as they can go.” 

She heard on the other hand from Myra all 
about Teddie and the trousseau and the absent 
lover who was doing so well in the West. Then 
Van poured out the tea, and Mrs. Arden took a 
cup, but said she could not stay to eat ; she had 
other calls to make. She would be back in the 
morning and bring her minister. They would 
like to see him ; he was a very good man, and so 


ALL YE ARE BRETHREN.' 


363 


n 


interested in young women struggling to make 
their own living. He would be helpful to them 
surely. So off she went, leaving Van a five- 
dollar note, saying it was “ pay in advance for 
some work she would bring the next day.’' She 
also left the sisters to cry heartily in each other’s 
arms, and then revive, and prepare to eat that 
delightful supper. But they both vowed they 
could not eat it without Miss Nancy and Delia. 

I can walk into Miss Nancy’s room,” said 
Myra, “ I feel so strong since that cup of tea. 
Call Delia to help you take in all the things, and 
we ’ll lay the cloth on the table by Miss Nancy’s 
bed, and we ’ll all be festive. I am sure it will 
cure Miss Nancy.” 

So Myra was escorted in state to a place be- 
side Miss Nancy’s bed, and Delia and Van, with 
joy and laughter and volubility, carried in the 
viands, and the tea was renewed, and what a 
supper they had ! Did n’t that big basket con- 
tain two pounds of sugar, a can of condensed 
milk, two whole loaves of home-made bread, a 
pound of butter, besides the chicken and tongue 
and half a boiled ham, a dozen of eggs, and a 
package of maccaroni, not to mention a paper of 
rice and a can of tomatoes ! 

Somehow, now that Van’s mind had been 
relieved of its load, she felt less reticence about 
her troubles, and as they ate supper, between 


364 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


Myra’s frankness and Delia admitting that she 
had seen and guessed much more than she had 
previously intimated, and Van’s unusually free 
speech, they told the whole story of the month 
of March. 

Then indeed was Nancy Tempest confounded. 
“You girls ! Well, I never ! Two cents a day ! 
Of all things ! And the pawnbroker and all. I 
never knew you were so bad off as that ; and you 
kept such a steady front. To be so pushed and 
pressed and half starved, you poor dears !” 

“ I felt as if I were stealing from you every 
time I carried anything out of the house,” said 
Van. 

“ Why you owe me nothing, my dear.” 

“ Still I had nothing to pay any more rent — 
and then — ” 

“You’ll be all right now,” said Delia. “I 
never saw such a dear sweet lady. She ’ll see 
that you find work. And look how Miss Nancy 
has brightened up with a good meal! The 
truth is. Van, I ’m slow at the button-holes, and 
have n’t much time, and Miss Tempest and I are 
almost as bad off as you are, or I ’d carried you 
in something ; dry bread, weak tea without milk, 
a little porridge without milk, a herring — that ’s 
what we ’ve had to live on.” 

“ I told her all about Miss Nancy, and about 
you,” said Van, “ and she said to ask Miss Nancy 


'‘ALL YE ARE BRETHREN.” 365 

if she could call to-morrow when she came to see 
us. She may, Miss Nancy ?” 

“ Delia,” said Miss Nancy with sblemnity, 
“to-morrow, early, you do up this room your 
best ; rub the stove well with newspaper ; put on 
the bed that best red-and-black-patch quilt that 
I made at home when I was a girl, and get me 
out my best bed-gown with the ruffle on the 
neck and sleeves. I ’ll let her see that Nancy 
Tempest is a respectable person.” 

The next day came Mrs. Arden bringing a 
bolt of linen towelling, which Van was to cut 
into towels, fringe, and tie the fringe properly ; 
also some crash to make into kitchen towels. 
She brought also a quantity of children’s cloth- 
ing in which Delia was to make the button-holes, 
at twice the price the tailors paid her. She had 
also a pretty little basket tied with a ribbon, 
wherein were fruit, jelly, sago, and a bottle of 
rich milk, for Miss Nancy. Evidently great care 
had been taken that this basket should be at- 
tractive, and seem a friendly gift, not charity, to 
the touchy Miss Nancy. 

Shortly after Mrs. Arden came in came a 
gentleman whom she introduced as her pastor — 
Dr. Linsdale. 

“ Your pastor has gone to Europe ; so I must 
look after his sheep a little,” said Dr. Linsdale, 
and began to converse with them pleasantly 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


366 

about their home in the country, their church, 
Mr. Lowell, the Sunday-school, their loss of their 
home. “1 remember reading about that at the 
time,” he said, “ and I felt much sympathy for 
the ladies so suddenly deprived of their home by 
a wicked act of defaulting. I wish I had known 
you sooner. No doubt, Miss Myra, I could have 
found you a place as a nursery governess.” 

“ Myra,” said Mrs. Arden, “ what I want to 
do is to drive round here this afternoon and take 
you to my house to stay two weeks, until you 
are quite strong. I have two little girls there 
to amuse you, and you can amuse them, telling 
stories and reading to them. Will you come?” 

Myra hesitated, but Van spoke firmly. “Yes, 
indeed, she will. I ’ 11 have her all ready. Now 
you will have a chance to get well, Myra. O 
Mrs. Arden, what shall I say to you ?” 

“ Nothing, but to tell me when to come for 
her. Does it not say in the Book, ' Be not for- 
getful to entertain strangers, for thereby some 
have entertained angels unawares ’ ?” 

“It says also,” burst forth Van, “‘Come, ye 
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
pared for you from the foundation of the world ; 
for I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat ; 
I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; I was a 
stranger, and ye took me in ; naked, and ye 
clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me.’ ” 


“ALL YE ARE BRETHREN.’’ 367 

“ I wonder,” said Dr. Linsdale, “ if we Chris- 
tians remember as we ought to thank God for 
opportunities of service.” 

“I will come for you at five o’clock,” said 
Mrs. Arden. 

“ I — have nothing fit to come to your house 
with — ” began Myra. 

“ Nonsense. That wrapper looks very neat 
and nice. And while you are with me we will 
devise something for the benefit of this original, 
odd, generous, good Miss Nancy and her faith- 
ful Delia.” 

“That is the nicest minister I ever saw,” 
exclaimed Van, when Dr. Linsdale and Mrs. 
Arden left. “ He ’s even nicer than Mr. Lowell. 
He seems to know so well what to do and say, 
he is so full of reasonable conversational sugges- 
tions. I wish I had known him when we first came 
to the city. What a help he would have been !” 

“ Do you know who he is?” said Myra, laugh- 
ing. She had talked most with Mrs. Arden, Van 
with the minister. 

“ No ; he is Dr. Linsdale.” 

“ He is the author of that book you flung into 
the corner of the garret and would have none of, 
because a man wrote it !” cried Myra in great 
glee. 

“ That unlucky book ! Well, it never ceases 
rising up to confront me like Banquo’s ghost ! 


368 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

Well, I mean to tell him of it. I think I ’d feel 
honester, and he 11 understand me about it, I 
know he will.” 

But meanwhile Van was rummaging bureau- 
drawers and their one trunk, looking for the 
best that she and Myra possessed, for Myra’s 
equipment for her visit to Mrs. Arden. Delia 
was sent out for soap and starch, and called on 
to help in some very prompt laundry work, 
while Myra sat by Miss Nancy and both worked, 
if slowly, on Delia’s button-holes. But then 
Myra and Miss Nancy felt better. They had 
all breakfasted, as they would dine together, 
from some of the contents of Mrs. Arden’s 
noble basket. 

Delia was quite in ecstasy over the three 
white aprons, the half-dozen handkerchiefs and 
collars, the little shoulder shawl of grandma’s 
work, the gingham gown, which Van prepared 
in the portmanteau for Myra to take on her visit. 
Delia thought this array gorgeous beyond com- 
parison. She judged it by what she had not ; 
Van judged it by what she had had. The 
standard of judgment makes so much differ- 
ence ! 

When Mrs. Arden came for her guest she 
found Myra ready, faint, but flushed and hope- 
ful, Van busy on the towels, Delia at button- 
holing, Miss Nancy remarking that “ there was a 


''ALL YE ARE BRETHREN.” 369 

springish feel in the air, and next day she would 
get up, if it was April fools’ day.” 

“ I shall come for you next week to spend a 
day with your sister,” said Mrs. Arden to Van, 
“ and she will send you a note every day.” 

"We’ll soon get on our feet now, I hope,” 
said Miss Nancy. 

" But I want these girls to go back to the coun- 
try the first of May,” said Mrs. Arden. " I ’ve been 
planning it all out. I believe they can manage 
it, and can make a good living there. I am going 
to teach you girls how to retrieve your fortunes.” 

"Go home! Leave the city! Go back to 
the country, to our own people !” cried the 
sisters in chorus, feeling for the instant as if 
the gates of Eden had swung open to receive 
its banished. Then dolefully, " But, Mrs. Arden, 
how can we ? It is not possible. We have not 
the smallest thing for a start. We are so much 
worse off than we were last spring.” 

"You are richer in experience,” said Mrs. 
Arden. " You will also be richer by my advice. 
I believe that will be worth much to you ; and 
as for how you will do it, we must think it out.” 

"We left there concluding that we could 
not make a living unless in the city, and con- 
sidering ourselves entirely defeated,” said Van. 

" A mistake, such as many make, but you must 
not allow it to lie as an incubus on all your 
24 


Adam’s Daughters. 


370 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


lives. The city is full of failures that come from 
the country, just as it is full of the success that 
comes from the country. No doubt over half the 
leading business and professional men in the city 
have been brought up, through childhood and 
boyhood at least, in the country or the small vil- 
lages. These, coming to the city to learn busi- 
ness, trade, or profession, bring with them the 
health, industry, economy, morality, gained in 
their quiet country lives when they were content 
to fare simply, keep regular hours, and live in 
the full light of the observation and knowledge 
and criticism of their neighbors. They come 
with formed habits of unflinching integrity and 
activity, and so have often a heavy advantage 
over the city boy, who has lived in far greater 
temptations and less helpful restrictions.” 

“ But what do you say for us, for girls ?” cried 
Van. 

“We’ll talk of girls some other day,” said 
Mrs. Arden. 

But when Mrs. Arden and Myra were gone. 
Van took her towel-making to Miss Nancy’s 
bedside and this same theme was discussed. 

“ She says we are to go back,” said Van. “ I 
want to go back. I am sure we can never get 
on so badly in the country as here. But, Miss 
Nancy, all cannot go back ; and besides, think 
how many there are who have never come from 


ALL YE ARE BRETHREN. 


371 


the country, who have no friends, no helpers 
^ there, no knowledge of the countr) — the many, 
many girls born and bred in the city, like Delia 
and the rest — what is to become of them ? Is n’t 
there any help for them ?” 

Of course there must be,” said Miss Nancy. 
“ As I have told you, time and again, if it was n’t 
for the overcrowding from the country, folks 
rushing here as soon as they get into any straits 
at home, there would be more room, more work, 
and higher wages here in the city. But your 
case, child, has set me thinking these long 
nights while I ’ve been lying awake from pain, 
and I ’ve done a deal of thinking last night and 
to-day, since I saw Mrs. Arden.” 

“ Tell me what you have thought. Miss Nan- 
cy.” 

I have thought that there should be free 
industrial schools for girls, where they could 
learn to do something well, whether it is to cook, 
or button-hole, or type-set, or book-bind, or what 
not. They should come to working days fit to 
earn wages, and not have to put in time when 
they need to make their bread learning to do 
the work, and being fined and taxed for doing it 
badly. There ought to be organizations of good 
Christian women to go out after these poor girls 
who are too proud or shy or ignorant or even 
evil to want to go to them. And the folks in 


372 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


your case and mine, child, shouldn’t hold so 
aloof and be so close - mouthed and proud, to- 
wards the richer Christian women. We ought 
to trust them more and give ’em a chance to be 
Christlike. There ’s the help for the poor girls 
of the cities.” 


WELCOME home! 


373 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

WELCOME home! 

“ My home ! The spirit of its love is breaking 
In every wind that plays around my track, 

From its low walls the very tendrils wreathing 
Seem the soft links to draw the wanderer back!” 

It was on Tuesday that Myra went to Mrs. 
Arden’s. Van and Delia worked industriously 
on the vests and button-holes that had been 
brought to them, and Miss Tempest sat by the 
fire and watched them as they sewed in her 
room. On Saturday Van went to stay with Myra 
over Sunday. Terry came for her and the work 
in Mrs. Arden’s coupe. As Van luxuriously 
rode to West Philadelphia, she mused on the 
phantasmagoric changes in her fortunes. The 
former Saturday, chilly and hungry, with two 
cents for food ; now, riding in a lovely coupe to 
make a two days’ visit in an elegant home. 
Van could hardly believe that she was not 
dreaming. 

She found Myra and Mrs. Arden in a charm- 
ing little morning-room opening from the nur- 
sery. Mrs. Arden was prepared to give the day 
entirely to the sisters, their plans and pros- 
pects. 


374 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


“ Mrs. Arden,” said Van, '' you seemed, from 
what you said Tuesday, to consider the city a 
good place for country boys to come.” 

Only if the boy has good health, firm moral 
principles, and such a paramount taste for busi- 
ness that he cannot find his sphere in the coun- 
try and has a very good chance of distancing 
his competitors in the city. Even then I be- 
lieve that his most hopeful prospects would lie 
in the less crowded new towns of the young 
West.” 

“ But you seemed to think that the boys’ 
chance of success in the city was greater than 
the girls’.” 

“Given equally firm moral character — let us 
say religious character, as judging from what is 
best — I think the boy’s chance is better than his 
sister’s. You will understand that it is easier 
and safer for a boy to economize and get along 
on very narrow means in the city than for a 
girl. There are more cheap, decent restaurants 
and lodging-houses for men than for women or 
girls. If a girl comes to the city to clerk or to 
learn a trade, she should have some relative or 
friend to afford her a good home. For a long 
time she will receive only a trifle of wages, which 
in many instances will not suffice to clothe her 
as her employers will insist upon her being 
clothed. Many people think that clerking in 


WELCOME home! 


375 

stores offers a girl a fine opportunity for making 
a living, but really it is very hard and wearing. 
Long hours, long standing, lifting and reaching 
for goods, exposure to close air, and draughts, 
and sudden changes, often great irregularity in 
the mid-day meal, all these things break down 
the health of girl clerks. In my view house- 
work is safer, easier, and far better paid. The 
wages may be the same, but board and washing 
are included for the house-girl, and eat up all 
the wages of the clerk.” 

“ But housework of any kind in the city gen- 
erally means to share bed, room, and table with 
low, untidy foreign servants, of gross manners 
and a hostile creed,” cried Van. 

“ That is too often true, except in the case of 
nurses who are to eat and sleep in the room 
with their charge. A nurse in a kindly Chris- 
tian family is a loved and esteemed member of 
the family, if she shows herself worthy of the 
position. As to the bed and room, the shop-girl, 
such as Delia, and the others of whom you told 
me, have the worst possible accommodations in 
that regard. My ideal would be that ladies 
keeping one or two or more girls should select 
those of like manners and antecedents, give 
them the comforts and amenities of home life, 
the rooms, rest, books, that will make life agree- 
able. In the country the objection you state is 


3/6 ' ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

obviated ; the working-girl there becomes one 
of the family, and is loved and considered as she 
shows herself worthy. But I am not suggesting 
this line of life to you ; we are only arguing on 
general principles before we come down to par- 
ticulars.” 

‘‘We would certainly rather go back to the 
country,” said Myra ; “I have not felt real well 
since I left there.” 

“ I have been making a little plan for you ; 
let us discuss it. I have a fancy that if you fol- 
low my advice, you can go home to make your 
fortunes. How much land was there about that 
little cottage which you lived in ?” 

“We only had a few rods of garden, but out- 
side of that there was over an acre that would 
rent cheap. That house with its land was so 
left that Mrs. Steele cannot sell it, and it is too 
small for any man to take, and women don’t 
rent land usually ; so it is not very available and 
would be rented very cheap to any one who 
would keep up the house and fences properly. 
I think forty dollars a year would cover the 
whole, we to do our own repairs,” said Van, all 
her farming instincts awake. 

“ Describe to me the kind of place it is. Was 
the soil rich ? Is the house dry ? Has it a cel- 
lar ? Has it any extra room ?” 

“The house was dry and comfortable, and 


WELCOME home! 


37; 


has a g-ood walled cellar under the whole of it. 
The cellar has two windows and a sloping out- 
side door. We did not use it. Over the ‘ L ’ 
kitchen was a room which we did not furnish ; 
it had a south and a west window. There is a 
well of splendid water, and there are two great 
apple-trees close by the house ; and there are 
some fruit-trees, a good pear and some cherry- 
trees, along the fence, in the acre that we did 
not rent. As I look back to it now, it seems a 
dear lovely place. When we lived in it we con- 
trasted it with our large nice house and the 
handsome farm of Poplar Rise, and thought it 
very poor.” 

“ If you go back there now and compare it 
with Aspen Square, it will improve and not lose 
by comparison.” 

But, Mrs. Arden, how can we go back ? We 
have not furniture enough for the house now, 
though as for that, I suppose we can get on ; we 
are very destitute of clothing ; we have no 
money for car-fare and for moving our things ; 
we could not be sure of earning the rent the first 
year. I have thought this week that if Myra 
and I could get work until next spring and save 
up all we possibly can, we may be able to go 
back. If Myra could get a place as nursery gov- 
erness, I should be willing to take anything. If 
I could find a place in a hotel linen-room, or as 


378 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

companion to an invalid — if you would only 
speak for us, Mrs. Arden.” 

“ I can do better for you than that, I hope,” 
said Mrs. Arden. “ I do not want you to lose a 
year in your new enterprise ; and there is your 
mother needing a home and longing for you. I 
think twenty-five dollars each, for clothes, laid 
out judiciously, now that goods are at the 
‘ spring sales ’ point, will fit you out very well. 
My husband is one of the directors of the rail- 
road by which you will travel, and he will secure 
you passes and transportation for your freight. 
Now several years ago I came into a little prop- 
erty, and according to my custom I tithed it and 
set apart the tithe — a few hundreds — to use in 
the Lord’s service ; and the manner of use I 
chose, and it was by Dr. Linsdale’s advice, was 
to help some of my self-supporting sisters to 
help themselves. I lend some of this tithe, 
without interest, for as long as may be needed, 
to those who can use it to establish themselves 
in earning a competence. I have never failed 

in having my loans repaid, often within the time 

■» 

set, though I lend without other security than 
an honest word. The money is the Lord’s. I 
lend it in his name and for his sake and he looks 
after his own. I will lend you of this money 
two hundred dollars for five years, to be repaid 
as is convenient during or at the end of that 


WELCOME home! 


379 

time, in sums large or small. Of the two hun- 
dred, one fifty for clothes, forty for rent for the 
first year, ten for those small articles needed 
further for your home, and one hundred keep to 
pursue your experiment. Have no hesitation, 
this is not charity ; it is a mere loan from your 
Father through me his steward. Have no fear 
that you cannot pay it back ; I have none. You 
will succeed.” 

But tell us just how you mean us to do 1” 
cried the sisters, bending forward, hope shi- 
ning in their eyes and gratitude and joy writ- 
ten on their faces. “ Oh how good you are to 
us !” 

“ I propose that you earn your living, as your 
uncle advised, from the earth. We will arrange 
with my grocer here to have your fowls and 
eggs sent direct to him without middlemen, also 
all the honey and fresh vegetables that you can 
raise. This grocer sells butter, eggs, fowls, 
vegetables, fruits, all only of the very best, to 
us dwellers on the outskirts of the city, who are 
willing to pay good prices for the very best. 
He can take all that you will send and ten times 
as much, and will pay well for what is nice, 
fresh, and well-packed. You must keep bees 
and raise silk- worms — that room over your 
kitchen will do for them finely. I want you 
also to raise fancy fowls for sale to a man in the 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


380 

city, who will buy your fancy pigeons and pea- 
fowls and guineas and any feathered thing that 
you can send him. You must make every inch 
of ground, everything that grows out of it, 
available and money-bringing. Each day you 
will find new opportunities opening to you. 
Nature herself will be full of suggestions to you. 
Keep your eyes open, your hands and brains 
ready. Let Myra, as she has any leisure, con- 
tinue that plan of studying, so that she will be 
capable of taking the Barley Centre school when 
your younger sister marries. By that time your 
farming experiment will be well inaugurated 
and Van and your mother can carry it on.” 

A new hope had dawned for the sisters. 
They could reconstitute their country home. 
Myra told Van that each day since she came to 
Mrs. Arden’s she had been reading history and 
geography and working at arithmetic and gram- 
mar. “Mrs. Arden thinks I can soon apply for 
a certificate,” she said joyfully. “ She says that 
my penmanship and reading will go a great 
ways.” 

That very night Van and Myra wrote their 
mother, saying that they were coming home to 
re-rent the little brown house and make their 
living in the country. They told part of their 
plan, saying that they had now money in hand 
for the experiment. Just the manner of getting 


WELCOME HOME 381 

it they meant to confide to their mother pri- 
vately when they saw her. 

Mrs. Milbury wrote back with great joy that 
she had become so much stronger during her 
visit to Uncle Daniel’s that she had gone out to 
a place nursing to earn the money needed for 
her spring clothing, and that the good news 
from her children was so benefiting her that 
she felt fully able to earn something more to aid 
in refurnishing a home. There were to be two 
or three sales of household goods early in May 
where their purchases could be made at low 
figures. 

When Miss Nancy heard from the delighted 
Van the new plan of campaign, she was divided 
between grief at losing the girls, who during the 
few months of their acquaintance had grown so 
dear, and joy at their improved prospects. Joy 
in the end conquered, for Miss Nancy was of 
those who can take another’s prosperity as 
cheerfully as if it were their own. She planned 
for the country life of Van and Myra as if she 
were planning for herself. “ It will do me good 
every hour to think of you,” she said. 

We shall feel less troubled about you, Miss 
Nancy,” said Van, “ for Mrs. Arden means to find 
you and Delia something that pays better than 
the button-holes. And as soon as we are able to 
put by money for your travelling expenses, you 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


382 

must come and make us a nice long visit. Next 
year perhaps. You can stay all summer with 
us.” 

Miss Nancy shook her head. “ We may all 
be dead by that time,” she replied. It was a fa- 
vorite expression of hers. 

But if Miss Nancy felt happy that “her 
girls” were to escape from the hardships of 
their life in the city, what was the jubilation at 
Uncle Daniel’s ! 

“ I say, sister-in-law and Sara Ann and mo- 
ther, our girls are coming to their senses,” he 
remarked, rubbing his hands after reading a 
letter from Van, “ coming to their senses with 
a vengeance. Now they are on the right track 
at last. Here ’s Van has written to me asking 
me to plough the garden and the acre, and har- 
row it and get it ready for work ; and to have 
the little old barn and the bit of grass near it 
set off with a high rod and wire-net fence and 
divided into three parts, for her to raise poultry • 
in. She wants me to buy her some setting hens 
and put ’em in the barn, and a setting turkey or 
two, and three hives of bees. She says they ’ll 
be home next week, April 20th, and she is going 
right to work as hard as she can. To-morrow 
morning every one of my six boys is going to 
that place to see to that ploughing and chicken- 
yard, and cleaning up and mending up the old 


WELCOME home! 


383 

barn. What a good thing this is, Sara Ann, 
that it ’s Ned’s school vacation, and our printer 
is home from Westchester for a vacation. I say, 
boy, can you hold a plough -handle as well as a 
composing-stick ?” 

“ You ’ll see,” said the printer. “ We boys 
will put in our best strokes for our Milbury 
maids.” 

Sara Ann,” said grandma, “ your sister and 
I will ’tend to all the work here for a day, if 
you ’ll take Hannah down to the brown house 
and get it cleaned for the girls ; and you ’d best 
carry over the camphor -chest, and see what 
stores you can spare them, poor dears.” 

‘‘Oh there ’s plenty to spare,” said the cheer- 
ful Sara Ann ; “ we have always stores on hand. 
There ’s meat and potatoes and beets and tur- 
nips and apples and dried fruit. We shall do 
a big churning the first of the week, and Ben is 
going to take a grist to the mill Saturday ; he ’ll 
take the girls a grinding of corn-meal and wheat 
flour.” 

“ I think I ’ll look over my big chest and 
sort them out a couple of pieced quilts, a blanket, 
and a few sheets and towels,” said grandma, very 
happy and important that she had yet some val- 
uables of her own to bestow on her girls. 

Round the neighborhood flew the news that 
the Milbury maids did not like the city, did not 


384 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


find that it agreed with them, and were coming 
home to earn their living among old friends. 
This soothed the rural pride of the community, 
and the old affection for one of its best families 
awoke with vigor. The life-long friends guessed 
part of the Milbury history and imagined the 
rest. The error of going to the city was fully 
condoned by the virtue of return. The Mil- 
burys had indeed been recreant to their rustic 
up-bringing, but now they eschewed urban ways 
and were to receive bounteous welcome. 

“Tired of the uppishness of the city, no 
wonder; and going to make a living raising 
things, like Christians.” Thus Hannah, who 
had never travelled twenty miles in her life, put 
the experiences of “Adam’s daughters.” 

The furniture came back from the city sev- 
eral days before its owners did. The girls were 
staying at Mrs. Arden’s, who was taking great 
delight in seeing Myra’s health restored, and 
both girls busy at her machine on their new 
clothes. 

Aunt Sara Ann and Hannah cleaned and 
settled the little brown house and put in the 
goods that the joyful Mrs. Milbury had bought 
at a sale. Then some thirty of the old friends 
made a descent upon the little brown house and 
supplied it with provisions, fuel, little ornamen- 
tal tokens of friendship^ bulbs, garden -seeds, 


WELCOME home! 


385 

flower -seeds, onion -sets, cabbage and tomato 
plants, and seed potatoes of the finest varieties. 
All that Van would have to do when she came 
in the morning would be to go to work and 
complete the planting of her garden, where, 
thanks to her host of boy cousins, lettuce, rad- 
ishes, and peas were already green above 
ground. 

Early in the morning Uncle Daniel met “his 
girls ” at the train. He wanted them to go 
home with him for a few days and wait for their 
mother, who was some miles off nursing. But 
no. Van and Myra said they were not in the 
least tired, the country air was balm and vigor 
to them, and every hour now was gold while 
they could work in the garden. 

“ But at five o’clock we ’ll come over to the 
farm, uncle, and stay all night,” said Van. 

And now once more they were in the de- 
spised little brown house, and it looked a palace 
to them ! What neatness, what comfort, what 
tokens of liberal love 1 Oh if Mrs. Arden could 
see how happy they were ! Oh if Delia and 
Miss Nancy could only share this comfort and 
joy! 

“ I shall never rest,” said Myra, “ until I am 
able to take care of Miss Nancy’s old age as if 
she were my mother or my aunt. I never shall 
forget the night when she was going to sell her 

25 


Adam’s Daugiiters. 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


386 

precious picture-frame to buy me some flannel. 
There was a true Christian for you.” 

“That picture! What is there about that 
picture?” said Van. “I can shut my eyes and 
see that big white horse head as clearly as if it 
were alive and coming towards me !” 

Meanwhile the two were putting on old shoes, 
old flannel gowns, old gloves, and the long un- 
used sun-bonnets, to go out to work in the 
garden. 

But hardly had they begun on the beds, 
planting cabbages here, tomatoes there. Van di- 
recting as to the manner born, and Myra obey- 
ing, as she usually did when Van became largely 
dictatorial, when the little picket-gate began to 
click, click, click, to the entrance of boys. It 
was a procession of boys sure enough. The 
Milbury maids had always been very fond of 
little boys, and correspondingly popular in re- 
turn. When living at the Rise they had given 
nutting, peach, apple, and water-melon parties 
to the little men of their acquaintance, and had 
held “ sports ” and ball and bow-and-arrow tour- 
naments for their delectation. After misfor- 
tunes came, the girls had had Sunday-school 
classes of boys and had been very popular in 
these. Now the boys had come to welcome 
their favorites home, and every individual boy 
had his basket. 


WELCOME HOME! 


387 

‘‘ Miss Van, I Ve brought you some goose-eggs, 
the largest eggs you ever saw.” “ Miss Van, I 
want you to raise some Muscovy ducks like 
mine. I Ve brought six eggs, half I had ; put 
’em under a hen, you know.” “ Miss Myra, I ’m 
so glad you ’re back. Here ’s four pigeons — two 
fan-tails and two tumblers. Can’t I climb up in 
your barn and fix a place for ’em?” '‘Miss 
Myra, I have a couple of pea-fowl eggs here and 
a hen to set on ’em ; she ’s a lazy hen, the kind 
that likes to set on two eggs. I ’m going to fix 
her up in your barn.” “ Miss Van, I ’ve brought 
three ears of my new kind of pop-corn for you 
to plant. It ’s splendid ; it pops out the biggest 
Captains !” “ Here ’s a bag of sunflower seeds ; 

pop said if you wanted to do what was right by 
your chicken-yard, you ’d plant a big row of sun- 
flower seeds around it and down the middle.” 
“ Here ’s a lot of plants of sage and thyme and 
summer-savory and sweet marjoram, to plant 
near the bee - hives.” “ Here ’s some slips. 
Miss Van, roses and geraniums, for near your 
door, you know. ’ ‘Are you afraid of her. Miss 
Van ? She is an Italian queen. I got three yes- 
terday. Do you know how to put her in the 
hive?’' Oh what heartiness, what friendliness, 
what hopefulness : how good, how very good, it 
was to be back ! 


388 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


CHAPTER XXIV.. 

WHEREIN CERTAIN SHEAVES ARE GATHERED. 

“When I shall to the moment say, 

Linger a while, thou art so fair.” Faust. 

Never had early summer seemed so fair to 
the Milbury maids. Every day was more beau- 
tiful than every other day ; each morning was a 
marvel of glory, eclipsed only by the glory of 
each evening. Past experiences of sorrow 
served but to sweeten present experiences of 
joy. When the queen of flowers bloomed along 
the hedgerows and in the gardens, the world 
seemed in a glow of rosy splendor which vied 
with the deep clear blue of the skies, the lush 
green of wayside and field, the sunlight flood of 
molten gold poured over all. 

This beauty, this joy, this peace, set Van Mil- 
bury to singing. She rose up from her straw- 
berry bed, pushed back the wide hat, and folding 
her arms behind her to straighten and rest her 
shoulders, she broke out, 

“ Bird of the wilderness. 

Blithesome and cumberless. 

Sweet be thy matin 
O’er moorland and lea.” 



Adam’s Daughters. Page 389. 






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SHEAVES GATHERED. 389 

She seemed glad as a lark herself. Van had no 
thought that in her happy heart lay hidden ran- 
cor towards any living soul. 

I consider that when in the fair garden of 
the prime, “ Satan sat squat like a toad at the 
ear of Eve,” no beast or bird or blossom guessed 
that here was evil crouched among good, or 
thought him other than a most peaceable Babra- 
chian. It needed the potent touch of Ithuriel’s 
spear to evoke the undisguised demon from the 
toad. 

As Van stood, resting and singing, a lad in a 
shabby topless gig drove up and called loudly, 
“ I say, be you Miss Milbury ?” 

“Yes,” said Van, moving towards the fence ; 
“ do you want anything ?” 

“ Timothy Drumm wants yer to come ter see 
him. Says yer kin ride back along er me, an’ I 
lay out ter fetch yer back ag’in. So yer ’d better 
be spry an’ git in.” 

And at the word “ Timothy Drumm,” wrath 
and vengeance woke in Van’s soul. She per- 
ceived that in these months that had grown into 
two years she had not forgiven Timothy, but 
held for him an irreconcilable grudge for what 
she believed to be a fraud. She retorted angrily, 

“ I want nothing to do with Timothy Drumm. 
He has swindled us once, and he shall not do it 
again. If he comes where I am I shall tell him 


390 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

SO,” and she drew up her gloves ready to return 
to weeding. 

“Why, girl!” cried the lad bluntly, “ Timo- 
thy a’ n’t likely to come to see you nor nobody 
till he rides in a hearse, an’ I do n’t reckon that ’ll 
be very long off. Did n’t yer know Timothy 
was a-dyin’ ?” 

“ No, I did n’t,” said Van, and rage began to 
be appeased in her soul before the chill shade of 
death. 

“ He ’s suffered awful,” said the lad, with evi- 
dent relish at having something to tell. “ He 
a’ n’t bin out of house for three months. Suthin’ 
growin’ in his stomac, doctor says. I live at his 
house, an’ I never liked Timothy anyway, but 
now I ’m main sorry for him, the way he yells 
sometimes.” 

Wrath all gone now ; in its stead pity in the 
face of Van. “Did he want to see me?” she 
asked. “What for?” 

“ I dun no. But he wants to see you awful 
bad, he does. He says, 'Jake, you drive over 
thar an’ bring Miss Milbury back along of you. 
An’ you stir your sticks an’ hurry, fur if yer 
do n’t git her here afore I die,’ sez he, ‘ I ’ll knock 
yer red head off yer,’ he sez.” Here the boy 
burst into a loud laugh over what he considered 
a good joke. “ I sez to him, sez I, ‘ Ef I do n’t git 
back with ’er afore yer dead,’ I sez, ‘ it ’ll be yer 


SHEAVES GATHERED. 


391 

ghost what ’ll knock off my red head, an’ I a’n ’t 
afraid of ghosts,’ I sez. But Mis’ Dnimm she 
sez, ‘ Do, Jake, hurry up, like a good feller, an’ 
git Miss Milbury here, for there wont be any 
peace till she comes.’ Mis’ Drumm a’ n’t half 
bad ; she makes good pies an’ nut-cakes, an’ she 
a’ n’t stingy of ’em neither. So I came along as 
fast as the old mare could trot it, and yer better 
come along with me, else that there ghost may 
knock my red head off some day.” And again 
he laughed loudly. 

“I’ll come,” said Van. “Wait five minutes 
for me.” 

She ran into the house for a hasty change of 
dress, and was soon rolling over the smooth hard 
roads to the Drumm farm. The distance was 
seven miles. The lad appeared to have ex- 
hausted his fund of conversation, and devoted 
himself strictly to his driving. 

Arrived at the Drumm farm, she found Timo- 
thy propped up in bed. He was white, emacia- 
ted, evidently near to death. At the sight she 
melted, and her words, “ I am very sorry to see 
you so sick, Mr. Drumm,” were sincere. 

“ Yes ; I wont hold out much longer. Miss 
Milbury. I sent for yer to settle up a — sort of 
mistake. Aaron had paid me that hundred and 
twenty for that yoke of oxen ; but Aaron was a 
careless chap sometimes, an’ he paid me one day 


392 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


cornin’ out of the bank, and said he ’d get the re- 
ceipt from me some other time — an’ he forgot it 
plumb. Paid me in bills — the hull of it — but I 
saw my way clear to get it ag’in from you gals 
an’ Daniel, an’ I got it. An’ it a’ n’t done me a 
mite of good either. It was the meanest trick I 
ever played, an’ it lay pretty heavy on me since 
I got so low down ; an’ I told my old woman, an’ 
she sez, ‘ Timothy, you ’ll never get ease till yer 
send for Miss Milbury an’ make a clean breast of 
it.’ So finally I sent — and there ’s the money 
just as I got it from yer, two fifties and two tens ; 
count it an’ see.” 

Van turned over the bills. 

“I reckon Timothy didn’t quite calculate 
how much wrong he was doin’ on that there oc- 
casion,” said his wife. 

“I’m glad you have given it back,” said Van, 
“ and I hope you ’ll be easier in your mind. It is 
written in the Bible, ‘ Whoso confesseth and for- 
saketh his sin shall find mercy,’ and you have 
done both. The Lord is willing to be gracious 
to you.” 

“ I reckon,” said Timothy, closing his eyes 
and turning away as if he wanted to sleep. 

The boy’s red head was thrust in at the win- 
dow. “ Yer ’d better let me take yer home. Miss 
Milbury. I ’ve got plenty to do to-day, bein’ as 
I ’m the only man on the place.” 


SHEAVES GATHERED. 


393 


Van told him to take her to Uncle Daniel’s 
home. He had raised the money, and to him it 
must be returned. When this affair had been 
talked over, and Uncle Daniel had his money 
ag-ain, he said, “ I was just going over to see you. 
Van. You will have to go to West Chester to- 
morrow with me to testify in that lawsuit about 
Miss Prudy’s farm. You and I were there 
the day the deeds were made, and we heard 
all that her cousin said. We are Miss Prudy’s 
chief witnesses.” Then seeing Van’s dismay, 
“We can start at six, and get home on the night 
train, so you ’ll only be gone one day ; and your 
expenses will be paid. You might as well take 
it cheerfully, and make a pleasure jaunt of it.” 

“So I might,” said Van, brightening up. 
“And I must hurry home and do ever so much 
work if I am to abandon my acres to-morrow.” 

“ Sit by and have your dinner first,” said Aunt 
Sara Ann, “ and one of the children can take you 
over in the buggy. I have ten pounds of butter 
to send to Mrs. Steele, so it wont put us out any 
to take you.” 

The next day Van made her trip to West 
Chester, finished her business in court, and had a 
pleasant visit with her printer cousin. When 
she took her place in the cars to return home 
she noticed a slender young woman in heavy 
mourning whose face dimly seen through her 


394 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


veil seemed in some way familiar. Three fine 
children were with this lady, and Van knew that 
she had never seen the children. After a time 
the lady spoke to the oldest child, a bright boy, 
and he came to Van and said, 

“ Miss Nelly Ames wants to know if you will 
come and speak to her.” 

Van sprang up at once. In her joy at seeing 
her former charge she shook hands warmly. 
‘ I am so glad to see you improved and going 
out again !” she exclaimed. “ I felt that some- 
thing about you was familiar, but these children 
are such unexpected companions for you that — ” 
“ It is all owing to you. Miss Milbury, and the 
scolding you gave me, as I called it, though it 
was just the plain sense I needed — and the words 
at the end of your letter. I kept thinking of 
what you said, that I was quarrelling with God, 
and ought to be working for him instead. I be- 
gan to feel that my excessive mourning was not 
right and praiseworthy, but really wicked and 
rebellious. One day I picked up a newspaper 
that my companion had brought into the room, 
and there I read of the death of a man, his wife, 
and youngest child, in a falling building, and 
that three children were left destitute and friend- 
less. It came to me like a fiash that here was a 
work and a family for me.^.^i^ resolved to open 
my house, invite the widow of our former pastor 


SHEAVES GATHERED. 


395 


to live with me, and take these three children 
and bring them up for God. My brother ap- 
proved my plan ; my sister feared I could not 
endure the responsibility; but I secured the 
children, had them made my wards by the court, 
and in a week I was back in my own home 
where I had been with my father and brother. 
I think it would have killed me at first, only the 
children at once seemed so loving and so fond of 
me, and I so felt that I was doing what my dear 
father would approve, that I lived through 
those first few months, and now I feel a different 
person. We have been up in the country, look- 
ing at a little summer place I have where I think 
of taking my family to spend the hot weather. 
We have missed our express train and have had 
to take this train to the Junction. I am so glad, 
because I have met you.” 

“And I am so glad too,” said Van. “ I should 
be yet more glad if you looked a little stronger.” 

“ I improve,” said Nelly. “ My wild indul- 
gence in grief has no doubt hurt my constitu- 
tion, and I never was very strong ; but now I 
hope God will spare me to bring up these chil- 
dren to be good and happy.” 

The talk then passed to some of Van’s expe- 
riences, and to her present prospects, and to the 
characters and dispositions of the children. 

“ I thank God that ever you came to the Re- 


30 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


treat,” said Nelly. “ By this time I should have 
been a maniac if God had not sent you there.” 

As the train drew near the Junction where 
Van must leave her, Nelly took off' her watch 
and chain and said, “ Dear Miss Milbury, I want 
you to take these, and wear them all your life for 
my sake, so that you will think of me and pray 
for me and will remember how you have helped 
me.” 

Van could not refuse a gift made in this 
way, and she and Nelly Ames parted with a 
warm embrace as of tried friends. 

This little episode seemed to add fresh joy to 
that blessed summer of the return of Adam’s 
daughters. How large a harvest had sprung up 
in Nelly Ames’ life from those two little seeds of 
truth dropped by Van Milbury — in the name of 
the Lord. 


GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY. 397 


CHAPTER XXV. 

GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY. 

“ The looks, the smiles, all vanished now. 

Follow me where the roses blow. 

The echoes of the household words 
Are with me midst the singing birds.” 

Mrs. Arden was an enthusiast in any work 
which she undertook, and had the happy faculty 
of aroUwSing enthusiasm in others. Her pastor 
used to say of her that he could not tell whether 
she was most helpful in what she did herself or 
in what she made other people do. Thorough- 
ness was one of her characteristics ; she did not 
take up a piece of work, carry it forv^-ard until 
the novelty was worn off, and then drop it for 
another. Each new plan was carried to a fair 
completeness. 

When she became interested for Van and 
Myra, she awoke kindred interest for them in 
her friends and relations, and after they re- 
turned to their early home her concern for them 
continued, and a monthly letter of okeer and 
advice kept pace with her constant thoughtful 
suggestions wherever in the city these might be 
of benefit to them. 

The sisters had not left the city empty- 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


398 

handed. Besides many little presents of dress 
and household belongings, Van was given a 
sewing and Myra a knitting machine. 

“ I ’ll never lose that machine by taking it to 
the city and risking it in a store,” said Van, re- 
garding her machine with great joy. She had 
felt wonderfully handicapped without one. These 
two machines were to be the winter reliance of 
the Milbury maids ; for the summer they had 
other occupations. 

The black chasm of their winter experience 
made it seem long years since they had been in 
this home neighborhood, and at first their eyes 
could not be satisfied with seeing nor their ears 
filled with hearing. As they worked in their 
garden how marvellously beautiful and blue 
were the skies, across which drifted clouds 
shining as the throne of Oama! What rare 
domes of fragrant bloom were those apple-trees, 
and how delicious the multitudinous murmurs 
of the bees among the blossoms! Sweet and 
homelike were the deep cooing of the pigeons 
preening themselves on the barn roof, and the 
sharp cheep of the downy chicks in the pali- 
saded yard. On every side were freshness and 
greenness and growth — lush fields of grass or 
grain eddying like mimic seas, and dark ver- 
dure of clover forming close heads of honeyed 
efflorescence. 


V 


GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY. 399 

And what beautiful and stirring industries 
were those which they undertook ! They were 
helping God to feed the world. From morning 
till night Van and Myra were busy in their gar- 
den, or among their fowls or bees, or with their 
silk -worms. What a wonder the silk -worms 
were for a time, and how many went to visit 
them in that long low sunny room over the 
outer kitchen. Their food, their eating, their 
weaving, their round silken balls, the final pro- 
cess of baking and packing, were subjects of 
absorbing interest to the village juveniles. 

The garden afforded food for the family, and 
also for the bees, fowls, and silk-worms. Not a 
corner but had corn or rows of sunflowers for 
the chickens, and the air was odorous with sweet 
things spread out for the bees’ table. 

Van found that with a little help from her 
cousins she could make bee-hives, chicken-coops, 
laying-boxes for her hens, as well as anybody, 
and from the old barn the sound of her saw and 
hammer might be heard as she “ carpentered ” 
with all her might. After such exercise she 
would come in to her dinner laughing and rosy, 
very different from the pale, languid girl who 
had dragged slowly home from the Ready 
Made Emporium.” Truth was. Van Milbury 
was now in her element ; what she called the 
“ twin brother ” side of her character was in the 


400 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


ascendant, and she thrived as having found the 
calling for which she was created. 

True the neighbors stared for a while, and 
wondered and then admired ; but Van had 
reached that happy point, mens sibi conscia recti, 
and she was cheerfully inconscia of what was 
said or thought about her. The end would jus- 
tify the course. It was just so with her pop- 
corn ; the community stared at over a quarter 
of an acre of pop-corn. “ Were the Milbury 
girls going to live on popped corn ! Were they 
going to give corn -parties all winter?” But 
when they heard what Van had made on her 
pop-corn, when shelled and sold without inter- 
vention of any other “ middleman ” than Mrs. 
Arden, to a city confectioner, they remarked 
that “Van Milbury had always been powerful 
level-headed — just like Adam, her father.” And 
then. Van made her own corn-sheller, and a 
good farmer who came to look at it, and bring 
her some seeds of a surprising new kind of cu- 
cumber, remarked that “ that corn-sheller Adam’s 
girl had made beat all nater.” 

Mrs. Milbury was at home keeping the house 
and helping in the garden part of the summer, 
and part of the summer she was out nursing, 
laying up a penny for winter. 

“You’ve great gifts, mammy,” said Van, “in 
pulling people through pneumonia and helping 


GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY. 40I 

them out of disasters like broken limbs. I do n’t 
want to interfere with your exercising your 
gifts, but let us be reasonable and business- 
like. Go only where there is a servant to do the 
work, and where you will be paid a fair price ; 
then you will not be so overtaxed and can afford 
not to go out so often. We must have you at 
home with us half the time at least. Gardening 
is what does you good. I believe gardening is 
the normal occupation of humanity. The Lord 
knew what was best for his creature when he 
made him.” 

Now you talk,” said Uncle Daniel, who was 
standing by ; “ that ’s sense for you ; Adam’s 
own daughter, sure enough !” 

Uncle Daniel was so rejoiced to have his 
nieces back near him that his broad counte- 
nance glowed like a full moon. Having had no 
girls in his family, his stout heart had taken his 
brother’s daughters as his own. 

The occasion in his life when Uncle Daniel 
was most thoroughly and seriously angry was 
one lovely evening when he and Van were lay- 
ing out a strawberry-bed, and she detailed to 
him the entire tricks and meanness of Uncle 
James, from her arrival in the city to his infa- 
mous flight. 

On that occasion Uncle Daniel exhausted al- 
most all the unprofane adjectives of condemna- 
26 


Adam’s Daughters. 


402 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

tion in the unabridged dictionary. Van was 
amazed at the extent of Uncle Daniel’s vocabu- 
lary of vituperation. 

“ But it ’s those other girls that I ’m thinking 
of,” cried Uncle Daniel, “the girls that didn’t 
find the friends that you found, that had no 
little brown house and no family in the country 
to come to. What about them ? Have they to 
stay there and be brow-beaten and starved and 
neglected ? Who is to stand up for them ? Is 
that villain. Uncle James, the only one of his 
kind ? It is enough to make a decent man wild 
to think how the poor girls and women are im- 
posed upon.” 

“ It would be a hard case, uncle, if only the 
few who could be got out of the city could be 
helped. I talked to Mrs. Arden about it. I 
found out from her that there were societies 
where we could have got help and advice if we 
had only known of them. There are women, and 
men too, ready to take up the case of the work- 
ing-girls and defend them, and interest in them 
is increasing. Mrs. Arden thinks the associations 
are very good, and that the individual work of 
women who have time and means and experi- 
ence and sympathy is better still. She says if 
such women would open a Working Women’s 
Bureau in every ward of the city, things would 
improve at once . ” 


GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY. 403 

“ Some one had better hurry up about it,” 
said Uncle Daniel; “the Lord takes account of 
evil doings.” 

When Teddie came home for the summer 
vacation there was great joy indeed. The mo- 
ther also remained at home at that time, and if 
fingers flew fast, tongues flew faster. Teddie 
did the sewing needed by the busy sisters, 
and learned to work on Myra’s knitting-ma- 
chine. 

“It is always well to learn something new,” 
said Teddie as she made the tall needles fly. 
Teddie also worked in the garden and brought 
back the roses which had paled a little in the 
schoolroom. Spare hours were spent in aiding 
Myra in her studies, so that she would be pre- 
pared to take the Barley Centre school when 
Teddie gave it up. Teddie had proved a very 
admirable teacher, and the halo of her achieve- 
ments would surround her sister. 

“ This little place of an acre and a half,” said 
Myra, “will be no more than Van can work 
alone with such help as ought to be given by a 
boy, and as soon as we can afford it we mean to 
take one of those poor miserable little city ur- 
chins and make a man of him out here in the 
country. We can afford it when I am teaching; 
in fact it would be nice to have a boy now ; we 
have to give up some things we could do if we 


404 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


kept a boy, and we have to call too much on 
Uncle Daniel’s boys for rough work.” 

But in all these conversations and confi- 
dences Teddie was never told the story of the 
“ winter of their discontent.” 

Teddie went back to school as the glorious 
autumn crowned the year with fruits. One of 
their trees bore unusually fine apples, and in an 
abundant crop repaid the root-culture and care- 
ful trimming which Van had in April bestowed 
upon it. These apples, and the fine winter 
pears of the great tree near the barn, were sent 
to the city for sale, the pop-corn departed to the 
confectioner, the honey was boxed and sent to 
the grocer, the silk cocoons were sold to the De- 
partment of Agriculture at Washington for ex- 
periments, and food for the winter was laid in. 
Thanksgiving saw Van’s poultry-yard nearly de- 
populated, while a barrel of dressed fowls went 
to the city, Uncle Daniel’s three younger boys 
killing and dressing the fowls and receiving 
their per cent, therefor. Van had been able to 
open a very good market for Uncle Daniel’s 
small fruits and vegetables with the grocer to 
whom she forwarded her produce, and Uncle 
Daniel found his year’s income unexpectedly in- 
creased. 

As winter appeared a division of lath and 
paper was built across the attic, and the bee- 


GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY. 405 

hives were placed there to winter. Each hive 
had sent off a good swarm, and Van had now six 
of these pretty insect-kingdoms under her juris- 
diction. 

“Van is showing no end of sense,” said 
Uncle Daniel. “ She sent to that city grocer for 
an empty molasses-barrel and sugar-hogshead ; 
she got ’em for a song, the freight was n’t much, 
and she has, in what of drippings and so on is 
in ’em, plenty to feed her bees on all winter and 
early in the spring, besides as much that was 
good for house use as would pay freight. She 
is going to grow her cucumbers in those hogs- 
heads next summer and save ground room. Oh, 
Sara Ann, what a head Adam’s daughter has ! 
I ’m as proud of her as if I owned her !” 

Winter brought not idleness but change of 
work. Mrs. Milbury sent several large parcels 
of hand-knitted work to the city warehouse; 
Myra found in the village and in Westchester 
sale for all the goods she could make on her 
knitting-machine ; and Van in her hard appren- 
ticeship to Uncle James had learned how to 
make flannel shirts, white shirts, and neck-scarfs 
and ties, and knowing how to do something well, 
found, either in Westchester or the village, sale 
for all the work she could do. 

But evenings were reserved for reading and 
study. Mrs. Arden sent Van books on garden- 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


406 

ing, agriculture, bee-keeping, and poultry-raising, 
and these Van studied sedulously. She took a 
first-class agricultural journal and exchanged 
with Uncle Daniel for his. Myra was working 
hard at her books and read aloud much history, 
poetry, and general literature. Mrs. Milbury 
often read to the girls as they worked during 
the day. The girls were happy ; they felt that 
they were growing intellectually, and they had 
the calm that comes from wider resources. 

As the Milbury family was one of those do- 
mestic sodalities where the joy of one is the joy 
of all, every one of them took a share in the 
happiness diffused by a letter from Wallace 
Cranshaw, and which made the cold dull month 
of February seem to Teddie as bright as May. 
Wallace had prospered amazingly in a land- 
investment which he had made, so that of a 
sudden he had been able to buy and furnish a 
lovely little cottage and put several thousands 
in the bank. How soon might he come for 
Teddie ? His preference was evidently to come 
by the next train. 

This letter was so important that Teddie had 
to give her school a Monday vacation, so that 
she could go home on Friday night and return 
Monday afternoon after spending Saturday and 
Sunday with her family. Saturday was spent at 
the little brown house, and after church Sunday 


GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY. 407 

they all went home with Uncle Daniel and 
grandma. Teddie decided to tell Wallace Cran 
shaw that he might come for her at the end of 
June. She had promised to teach her school 
during the year, and Adam’s daughter must 
keep her word. 

“That ’s it,” said Uncle Daniel, “faithful over 
a few things and the Lord shall make thee ruler 
over many things,” and he read them the chap- 
ter where it says, “ I have been young and now 
am old, yet have I never seen the righteous for- 
saken, nor his seed begging bread.” 

Mrs. Arden and Miss Nancy were of those 
speedily informed of the good fortune of Ted- 
die ’s lover. Mrs. Arden wrote inviting Van to 
come to the city for a week. She thought Van 
would improve her business prospects and rela- 
tions if she came to Philadelphia and inter- 
viewed certain parties to whom she could for- 
ward produce. Mrs. Arden said she might make 
a good bargain with one of the hotel proprietors 
if vshe came and attended to the business herself. 
She enclosed a pass for the trip, asked Van to 
stay with her in the city, and said that if she 
came prepared to make Teddie ’s purchases, she 
could make good bargains and save money. 

Van Milbury had never felt any fear of rob- 
bers or pickpockets until she started for the city 
having in a pocket, sewed into the bosom of her 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


408 

dress, two hundred dollars of the economical 
Teddie’s earnings. She feared to close her eyes 
lest in some occult fashion this secret hoard 
should be detected and cut away without her 
knowledge. What riches that money seemed. 
The leading school trustee had offered Teddie 
her March and April salary in advance, so Van 
departed to the city with her sister’s entire for- 
tune. She took also a trunk filled with gifts for 
Miss Nancy, gifts not only from herself, mother, 
and sister, but from the larger stores of Uncle 
Daniel, who sent word that he “should be a 
proud man when he could make Miss Tempest’s 
acquaintance in his own home.” 

That was a busy week ; Van made engage- 
ments to supply honey, vegetables, a certain 
amount of strawberries, eggs, fowls, and mush- 
rooms to a liberal purchaser. Mushrooms ! 
Here was to be a new industry for Van, wherein 
she embarked resolute but trembling. 

Mrs. Arden took Van in her coupe from store 
to store to make Teddie’s purchases, in which 
Teddie had insisted on including a dress each 
for her mother and sisters. However Van 
bought these dresses of nun’s veiling, so they 
were not a heavy drain on Teddie’s fortune. 

One day was spent with Miss Nancy, besides 
several calls. Van had made up her mind that 
Miss Nancy should come to Teddie’s marriage, 


GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY. 409 

and should remain for four weeks. She would 
send the money for the ticket, and she had in 
her pocket a little sum donated by herself, sister, 
mother, and Uncle Daniel, wherewith to pur- 
chase for Miss Nancy a gown for the occasion. 
She and Miss Tempest went out to choose this 
gown, and while they were gone a gentleman 
came to see Van. He was on business, and Mrs. 
Arden had sent him to Aspen Square, where 
Van was for the day. The business was that he 
wanted Van to take home with her an eleven- 
year old lad, an unusually nice little fellow out 
of very bad surroundings. He wanted the boy 
to be brought up in the country, and was sure he 
would prove the very boy that Van needed. He 
himself would clothe the child and pay his car- 
fare. The gentleman waited in Miss Tempest’s 
clean dull sitting-room. There was nothing to 
look at but the picture bequeathed by the late 
Mr. Dotter. The gentleman stared at the white 
horse, and the white horse stared at him from 
the wall. The white horse began to seem like 
an old friend. The gentleman rose, admitted all 
the light that he could by pulling the shades to 
their highest, and took a nearer view of the 
white horse. Then he got out a magnifying- 
glass and scrutinized every part of the picture, 
which in Miss Nancy’s view had' nothing to com- 
mend it but “ an aristocratic frame.” He was so 


410 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


intent on the horse — which after all was only the 
head and chest of a horse thrust into the picture 
from one side, and watching over a fallen knight 
and other concomitants of a mediaeval time — 
that he did not at first recognize the arrival of 
Miss Nancy and Van. 

Van very promptly met the visitor’s views 
about the boy. To look up and rescue one city 
waif had been part of her errand to the city. 
She expected to be very busy that summer, and 
the first of September Myra would leave her and 
go to Barley Centre ; the boy must be well in- 
ducted into his various functions before then. 
The boy by all means. 

“ I ’ll bring him here to-morrow at ten,” said 
the gentleman, and turning to Miss Nancy, 
May I bring a friend to see this picture ?” 

“ Oh, yes,” said Miss Nancy, “ but it ’s hardly 
worth seeing, now that the handsome frame is so 
spoiled. It used to be real nice.” 

The sharp-eyed Van detected a singular look 
on the guest’s face. 

The next day the two gentlemen and the boy 
came, and Van speedily agreed about the boy. 
The gentlemen examined the picture. They 
went into the hall and conversed. Then Van’s 
guest returned, the other departing. “ Madam, 
will you sell that picture — for — a good price ?” he 
said to Miss Nancy. 


GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY. 411 

“ For how much ?” said Miss Nancy. “ Sell it 
out and out ?” 

The gentleman hesitated. He was a Chris- 
tian man with a terrible opportunity to go be- 
yond and defraud his neighbor. But grace tri- 
umphed. “ I ’ll give you three thousand dollars 
for it.” 

Miss Nancy turned pale. She looked at Van. 
Van was behind the gentleman. To Miss Nan- 
cy’s amazement Van shook her head at her not 
to take the offer ! Miss Nancy was paralyzed. 
But she had the greatest confidence in Van. 
“ I can’t agree to it — to-day,” stammered Miss 
Nancy. 

“For how long does your offer hold good?” 
asked Van. 

“ For any reasonable time. It is all I can pay 
for the picture, and I consider it a fair price.” 

“ Miss Tempest will consider it,” said Van ; 
“ the picture was left her by an English friend 
who died here in her house.” 

“ Oh, Van ! all that money ! Why did n’t you 
let me take it ?” shrieked Miss Nancy when the 
gentleman and boy were gone. 

“ Because I think a richer man will give you 
more, and this is a good offer for a time yet, 
while we look up the matter.” Van had been 
reading some things about pictures that winter, 
and besides Adam’s daughter was developing a 


412 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


marvellous capacity for business. Some flowers 
will only grow in the sunshine, and some na- 
tures will only grow in the broad light of suc- 
cess. Van’s was one of these. 

That day Van went to the most distinguished 
art dealer in the city. Lo ! the dealer was the 
very person who had accompanied the would-be 
buyer of Miss Nancy’s picture. 

Sir, will you tell me who painted that white- 
horse picture ?” 

Philip Wouverman, of Haarlem, born in 
1620, died 1668,” replied the dealer with courtesy. 

Are his pictures very valuable ?” 

“ Quite so.” 

“ The gentleman with you offered Miss Tem- 
pest three thousand dollars.” 

** It was a fair price. Most of the Wouver- 
mans have brought about that, or less than that. 
They are desired for all Dutch collections and 
all galleries. There is one yonder.” 

But that is very small.” 

“ Yes, it is. The fact is that the picture Miss 
Tempest has is a genuine and long-lost Wouver- 
man, one of his largest, perhaps his very largest ; 
and it has a fictitious value from some singular 
historic associations. As a picture, three thou- 
sand is an honorable price. One of our many 
millionaire buyers, who has a hobby for curios, 
might run way up beyond that.” 


GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY. 413 

‘‘Thank you/’ said Van. Then she inquired 
of Mr. Arden if there was a picture-buyer known 
to him who did not stand on ceremony about a 
few thousands where his taste was concerned. 
Mr. Arden gave her the name and address of a 
gentleman gone to Europe who would be back 
in the fall. 

Then Van went to the dealer and exacted 
profound secrecy about that picture, then to the 
gentleman who had found the boy, and had his 
offer extended until the January ensuing, and 
also his promise of secrecy. And then in the 
night, which brings time for holy meditation 
and counsel for God’s children. Van, wakeful, 
admired the dealings of Providence. Here in 
the city was his child Miss Nancy, growing old 
and poor. The Father had seen that this sharp 
and withal somewhat hard nature had needed 
the tutelage of sorrow. In her toilsome way 
divine grace had upheld her, and had taught her 
to succor the needy and do good, hoping for 
nothing again. And out of a good deed done in 
Christ’s name to a dying exile God had caused 
to rise in slow succession the events which should 
secure for his child, now old, feeble, homesick, 
and heartsick, a peaceful age. What singular 
steps in this path ! — Mr. Dotter dying and leav- 
ing the picture to Miss Nancy ; the picture hav- 
ing so little to commend it to the eyes of ignor- 


414 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


ance that Miss Nancy could not sell it for a trifle 
even when she would ; the going of the sisters 
to her house ; the friendship of Mrs. Arden, and 
so on, one by one, the events unfolding for Miss 
Nancy’s good. How often had poor Miss Nancy 
looked with terror to her future, when she should 
be unable to work for daily bread ! And yet all 
along God had under his hand ample provision 
for that idle time. “ He knoweth the way that I 
take, and when he hath tried me I shall come 
forth like gold.” 


THE BOUNTIFUL MOTHER. 


415 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE BOUNTIFUL MOTHER. 

“ Bland as the morning breath of June the southwest breezes 
play, 

And through its haze the winter noon seems warm as sum- 
mer’s day. 

The fox his hillside cell forsakes, the muskrat leaves his 
nook. 

The bluebird in the meadow brakes is singing with the 
brook. 

‘ Bear up, O Mother Nature,’ cry bird, breeze, and streamlet 
free, 

‘Our winter voices prophesy of summer days to thee.’ ” 
The night before Teddie was married Van 
and Myra held another midnight session, but not 
of a melancholy character. They had two lamps 
brightly burning, and in two large trunks they 
were packing “ Teddie’s things.” Every article 
had been earned by steady industry, and made 
by hands interested in the work. Each possCvS- 
sion seemed precious for the thought and pru- 
dence which it had cost. Every article ? Well, 
there might be excepted a dozen of towels, a 
dozen of table-napkins, and a table-cloth from 
Mrs. Arden, and a box full of tidies and toilet- 
cushions and lamp - mats and bureau - scarfs 
wrought by Teddie’s friends, and a score of pen- 
wipers, needle-books, work-bags, blotters, and 


4I6 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

holders, the achievements of the Barley Centre 
pupils. And Barley Centre had outdone itself in 
presenting Teddie with a handsome silk um- 
brella. 

Van knelt on the floor packing whatever 
Myra folded and handed to her. There were 
two quilts, one knitted and one silk, made by 
grandma ; two pairs of blankets made from the 
wool of Uncle Daniel’s own sheep ; here was a 
clock from the six cousins; a sofa -pillow and 
embroidered shams from the mother ; a family 
Bible from Mr. and Mrs. Lowell, and a noble 
pile of sheets and pillow-cases and towels earned 
by Teddie herself. 

^‘What nice things our Teddie has!” cried 
Myra, “ and we were so afraid she would have 
nothing at all. Van, how very often we are 
afraid of things which do not happen, as children 
are afraid of ghosts which do not exist.” 

“ I reckon that if we had plenty of faith, faith 
to think that God knows and directs all, and 
is doing just right, we should be much more 
comfortable,” said Van slowly. 

No doubt we should,” said Myra, .sitting on 
the floor to rest, and hugging her knees and in- 
dulging in a see-saw to and fro, as she sat beside 
the trunks and peeped into their depths. “ Oh 
how delighted I am that everything has turned 
out so well! Van, you are a grand planner! 


THE BOUNTIFUL MOTHER. 417 

See how well your arrangements have pros- 
pered !” 

Especially that hideous mistake of going to 
the city to Uncle James,” said Van with fine 
self-scorn. “ That was a terrible experience, go- 
ing there among strangers, in a strange city, to a 
life we were unaccustomed to, to try and do work 
of which we knew nothing ! Oh that is to me 
just like a horrible nightmare !” 

“ Consider,” said Myra, who was a true 
daughter of consolation, “ that if we had not 
gone to the city we should never have found 
such friends as Mrs. Arden and Dr. Linsdale. 
It is worth something to know a man who has 
written a book, even if it is a foolish and ridicu- 
lous book — ” 

“ Wt// you hush !” cried Van, crowding one of 
Teddie’s new kerchiefs into Myra’s mocking 
mouth. “ It is a fine book !” 

‘‘ And,” said Myra, depositing the kerchief in 
the trunk, “we should not have helped Sadie 
and Delia, or taken charge of this boy Tommy, 
who is sleeping tranquilly in the attic with the 
silkworms. We should not have found dear 
Miss Nancy, and she would not have found the 
fortune you are likely to make for her out of 
that picture — though I do n’t believe you ’ll ever 
get over three thousand for it, and you should 
have jumped at that.” 


Adam’s Daughters. 


27 


41 8 ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 

“ Well,” said Van, “ God knows how to bring 
good out of evil, and it was evidently written in 
our destiny that we should go to the city. It 
was there we got our experience. If we were 
doomed to make fools of ourselves some time in 
our lives, I am glad it is over and done with, and 
we can settle down and be reasonable.” 

‘‘The immediate show of reasonableness re- 
quired,” said Myra, “ is to finish this packing. I 
have to shut my mind to the thought of our 
blessed Teddie going way off to Nebraska,” and 
she laid a counterpane in the open trunk. 

“Don’t look at it in that way,” said Van. 
“ Distance now-a-days is to be measured not by 
miles, but by the time it takes to travel them ; 
and, after all, we shall be only four days apart. 
Boston and New York were that far apart once. 
When we get rich, Myra, we ’ll go and spend a 
winter with Teddie and Wallace.” 

The two girls laughed ; they could afford to 
laugh at the joke of getting rich, now that they 
were not so nippingly poor. 

And so the sisters and their mother would 
not let any grief of theirs come to the surface to 
dash the happiness of Wallace Cranshaw and 
Theodora his wife, but with good words and 
brave smiles sent them forth on their journey to 
the West. It is true that Mrs. Milbury found it 
needful to disappear for several hours that after- 


THE BOUNTIFUL MOTHER. 


419 


noon, “ for a long nap she did not look as if 
she had slept when she came to the supper-table. 
Van, while her mother was “ sleeping,” retired 
to the barn, and a great sawing and hammering 
announced the construction of a new bee-hive. 
The pigeons, tumbler, fantail, and common, may 
have known whether any tears sullied the sheen 
of Van’s tools. 

Myra put a chair for Miss Nancy in the mid- 
dle of the garden, and circulated about her intent 
on her vegetables, directing the boy Tommy in 
capturing “ potato-bugs,” and giving Miss Nancy 
between whiles items of information, for Myra 
had an admirable memory. . 

Miss Nancy, our great-grandfathers had less 
worry with their gardening than we do. They 
had no potato-bugs to hunt, one very clear reason 
for their exemption being that they did not raise 
potatoes. In 1 720 a potato was first given to our 
ancestors as a vegetable curiosity ; and thirty 
years after a man who laid in a bushel of pota- 
toes for winter was making large provision of 
that scarce tuber.” 

“A bushel!” cried Miss Nancy. '‘Well, 
Myra, times have changed.” 

“ Yes,” said Myra, carefully spreading her 
tomato vines over their supporting frames, “ and 
here was another vegetable our Pilgrim ancestor 
did not have to worry with. He called the to- 


420 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


mato a love-apple and considered it poisonous 
until 1828. I ’ve heard grandma tell about that. 
When she was a child she was strictly forbidden 
to touch one of the dangerous things.” 

“ Seems to me, Myra, I ’d be content to pick 
potato-bugs, or peas either, for the chance of 
staying in the country. I tell you what, if Van 
gets three thousand out of that Mr. Barker for 
my white-horse picture, now that the frame is 
ruinated, I mean to try and get a little place 
near you here in the country. I tell you what, 
Myra,” and Miss Nancy lowered her voice, “ I 
sometimes feel afraid that Van made an awful 
mistake not letting me snap at that money, if 
the man was in earnest.” 

He was in earnest,” said Myra, “ and his 
offer holds good until January. Even if he do n’t 
take the picture then, the dealer will give three 
thousand for it, so you ’re safe for that much. 
Miss Nancy, only Van hopes you ’ll get more. 
She do n’t want a word said about it though, for 
fear it will be stolen.” 

'‘Oh it wont be stolen,” said Miss Nancy. 
“ Mrs. Arden came and took it out of the frame, 
and had it put in a bank-vault, to stay till New 
Year’s. The idea, Myra, of all that fuss over 
that homely picture ! Now if it had been some- 
thing bright and handsome I could comprehend 
it better.” 


THE BOUNTIFUL MOTHER. 42 1 

There were a many things which Miss Nancy 
could not comprehend, and one was why she 
could not get to sleep by eight or nine o’clock in 
the evening, now that she had opportunity. 

“ I declare,” she said one morning, “it is the 
queerest thing. I ’m so sleepy evenings at 
home, I am like to die ; feel as if I would give 
anything in the world to have those lodgers get 
in, so I could go to bed. And here I go to bed, 
and all is so quiet and airy, and the crickets and 
katydids and whip-poor-wills sing and call, and I 
lie awake till near midnight reg’lar.” 

“ It will take you more than four weeks. Miss 
Nancy, to get back the habit of going to sleep 
early,” laughed Van. 

“ I ’ll get it back,” said Miss Nancy firmly, “ if 
ever I’m able to get clear of that No. 8 and 
come into the country and bring Delia along. 
She and I will go to bed at sundown, and sleep 
like tops.” 

“ I ’ll see you here some time to stay,” said 
Myra to Miss Nancy, as she bid her good-by at 
the station. Miss Nancy had had a delightful 
visit; she and Mrs. Milbury and Aunt Sara 
Ann had become great friends. Uncle Daniel’s 
boys had taken her to ride, and Myra, with pride 
and regret, had taken her all over the Poplar 
Rise farm. Miss Nancy and Myra were at 
a loss to understand why the new owners of 


422 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


Poplar Rise were homesick and wanted to go 
back to Ohio. 

All the little boys of the neighborhood had 
smacked their lips with envy that spring, when 
they heard that Van meant to plant quarter of 
an acre with peanuts and that Uncle Daniel was 
to put in an acre of that dainty. Van was to 
sell her peanuts to the confectioner. 

But the greatest wonder was excited by Van’s 
performances in her cellar. She entered into 
this cellar-work with doubting, and yet resolved 
to make it a success if care could do it. The cel- 
lar had been intended for a larger dwelling than 
the little brown house, and was dry and well 
ventilated and extended under the entire build- 
ing. Van’s first care was to mark off a strip four 
feet and a half wide and extending around the 
whole cellar. It was set off by a boarding two 
feet wide, and in this space, enclosed between 
the wall and boarding, she had load after load of 
rich earth mingled with straw and fertilizers 
thrown. She was fortunate in securing earth 
cheaply which was being removed from above a 
bed of brick clay which a city firm was about to 
work. The filling in with earth cost Van ten 
dollars, the boarding and straw five more. Some 
people said “ Van Milbury must have money to 
throw away, the way she was going on with that 
cellar.” 


THE BOUNTIFUL MOTHER. 423 

The work in the cellar was done in April 
when she returned from her visit to the city. 
Van and Myra, in their oldest gowns and shoes 
and thickest gloves, carefully levelled and 
smoothed the earth, and when all was ready, 
committed to it a quantity of little white stems 
which Van had brought from the city in boxes, 
and now laid lengthwise in the earth in her twi- 
light, damp cellar-garden, where morning and 
afternoon sifted slantwise rays of sunlight. 
Even Uncle Daniel forebore to encourage, while 
he gallantly forebore to condemn, that enter- 
prise. Van herself trembled for it. Money was 
so scarce, and fifteen dollars was such a sum for 
her ; and besides there were the one and two- 
quart baskets which she had bought wholesale 
in the city. 

'‘If the mushrooms fail,” said Myra, “you 
can use the baskets for your strawberries. I 
never saw finer bloom than on our eighth of an 
acre of strawberries.” 

But the mushrooms did not fail. Nature 
kept her promises. People had told Van that 
this cellar-garden would make the air of the 
house bad and unhealthy, but they were all 
wrong. The open windows gave free current 
of air over the cellar-beds, and the swiftly- 
growing mushrooms used up the moisture. The 
straw kept the beds light, and in August Van 


424 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

was rewarded for her toils by seeing the mould 
broken in every direction by the creamy cush- 
ions of her mushrooms, with their dainty fra- 
grance and their rosy silken veils. A speedy 
and abundant crop kept Van busy each after- 
noon picking and packing mushrooms ; then 
the baskets were piled in a barrow, Tommy 
trundled it to the station, and away went the 
baskets for their six hours’ trip, to be in the city 
early in the morning. One hotel and one res- 
taurant took all the mushrooms she could raise. 

Another enterprise which was succeeding 
well was a large asparagus-bed which Van had 
started the previous summer, laying it off and 
preparing it with great care. 

It beats all what success Van Milbury has 
gardening out of books and papers,” said her 
neighbors. But besides the books and papers. 
Van had a natural inherited genius for the work 
she had undertaken, and was always ready to 
ask advice out of the experience of Uncle Daniel 
and other farmers of her acquaintance. 

Uncle Daniel had given his nieces a young 
cow for a Christmas present, and the younger 
cousins appeared early one spring day with a 
pair of fat, white, short-nosed, short-legged pigs, 
which were warranted “ to squeal and eat like 
anything.” The boys built a stout pen behind 
the barn, for Uncle Daniel’s boys were taught 


THE BOUNTIFUL MOTHER. 425 

to use tools and keep barns, fences, gates, pens, 
in good repair. Van felt very prosperous when 
she heard the various sounds from her poultry- 
yard, the satisfied grunting of her pigs, the coo 
of her pigeons, and saw the mild face and con- 
templative eyes of her cow looking over the 
barnyard fence. 

In the autumn Myra secured the school at 
Barley Centre, and Mrs. Milbury agreed to re- 
main at home all winter and be content with 
what money she could make on the knitting- 
machine. At Christmas Myra came home, and 
Van went to the city to see about Miss Nancy’s 
picture. She took with her fifty dollars to pay 
Mrs. Arden on the loan made her. 

Van had succeeded in discovering the impor- 
tance attached to Miss Nancy’s picture. It was 
one said to have been purchased by Charles II. 
when in the Low Countries before he was in- 
vited to bring back to England the Stuart dy- 
nasty. The white horse — which appeared only 
as head and shoulders, Wouverman excelling in 
painting that part of a horse, but never being 
able to paint the whole animal with equal vigor 
and excellence — had struck the exiled Charles 
as resembling a favorite horse which had once 
carried his father. He bought the picture, took 
it to England when he became king, gave it to 
one of his favorites, and after a number of years 


426 ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 

it had disappeared and was known as “ the lost 
Wouverman.” 

How or when it had drifted into the hands 
of Mr. Hotter ’s grandfather, by fair means or 
foul, who could tell ? At all events Mr. Hotter 
had left his landlady a fortune in the picture 
which she insisted upon calling “ a dull homely 
thing,, the like of which, except as a keepsake of 
poor Mr. Hotter, she didn’t see how any one 
could want.” 

Van, after two weeks in the city and much 
interviewing of dealers, and Mr. Banbee, and 
the millionaire who was able to give a fancy 
price for a relic of the light-minded Stuart king, 
after the picture had been viewed and reviewed 
by experts and artists, and after she had made a 
stout fight for the highest figures she could 
obtain, took a bill of sale for Miss Nancy’s sig- 
nature whereby she divested herself of Mr. 
Hotter’s souvenir ft)r the handsome price of 
fifteen thousand dollars. Miss Nancy was so 
overcome by that piece of good fortune, after a 
life singularly devoid of fortunate incidents, that 
she fell ill and kept her bed for a fortnight, well 
nursed however by Helia. Van was obliged to 
go home and leave Miss Nancy overcome by 
riches. 

“ It ’s an awful shame. Miss Nancy, that you 
have to be sick in bed just here when you have 


THE BOUNTIFUL MOTHER. 427 

come into sucli a fortune,” said Delia; “but it’s 
true we have lovely things to eat !” 

“ Delia,” said Miss Nancy with primness, 
“ do n’t you ever dare to call one of the Lord’s 
ways an awful shame. Here I ’ve been calling 
things ‘ too bad ’ and ‘ dreadful shames ’ and 
' good luck ’ and ‘ bad luck,’ and I just did n’t 
know what I was talking about. You ’d be sur- 
prised, Delia, to know how in this very room 
I ’ve sat and repined against the Lord’s deal- 
ings. When I think of it I am that ashamed I 
want to hide. But who can hide from God? 
‘ If I ascend into heaven, thou art there ; if I 
make my bed in hell, behold thou art there ; if I 
take the wings of the morning and fly to the ut- 
termost parts of the earth, even there shall thy 
hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.’ 
What can a poor sinner overwhelmed with 
shame for misdoings and long repinings do, 
Delia? Why, just get behind the Lord Jesus, 
so as to be lost in his righteousness, and that is 
what I am trying to do. And as for being sick 
here, the days pass like minutes while I am ask- 
ing the dear Lord to help me to use my great 
fortune in his service.” 

Her great fortune! Blessed nourishing of 
poverty, she had — fifteen thousand dollars ! 

Miss Nancy, however, was not slow in recov- 
ering. .She notified her lodgers that she meant 


428 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


to close her house, she gave up the lease of 
dingy No. 8 to the landlord, and divided all her 
goods and all her clothing among the poor 
neighbors. 

“ I don’t want one thing I have ever had in 
Aspen Square,” said Miss Nancy, “ but the fam- 
ily Bible with long s’s that I ’ve read so long, 
the sampler my mother worked at school, and 
the teaspoon my grandmother gave me when I 
was a baby. I ’m not to say young, but I mean 
to start fresh and new.” She bought herself 
a new outfit, very simple and substantial, gave 
Mrs. Arden three hundred dollars to lay out in 
work among working-women in hard circum- 
stances, sent Delia to live for a little time with 
Mrs. Linsdale, and then herself appeared at the 
little brown house, saying she “ wanted to stay 
quiet with her dear girls for a while until she 
had time to think.” 

Miss Nancy thought she should find plenty 
of interest in life watching the ventures which 
Van inaugurated. 

“ If it do n’t seem like the old times when I 
was a girl !” cried Miss Nancy, after a day where- 
of the achievements were registered in lard and 
sausage, souse and head-cheese, with ample work 
left over in the outer kitchen to fill to-morrow 
and to-morrow. “We used to do all this kind 
of work in the big kitchen of our log-house. 


THE BOUNTIFUL MOTHER. 


429 

And how father would praise mother’s sausages ! 
We began the day ‘by candle-light, but it was 
never too dark nor too early nor too busy for 
family prayers. I can just see father now as he 
looked, sitting by the stand, the candle-light 
shining into his face as he bent over his book 
reading out a Psalm. Dear knows, I do wonder 
why I have wasted so much time fearing I ’d get 
to the poorhouse, when there was the verse all 
the time about the seed of the righteous not 
begging bread.” 

“And all the time,” said Myra, who was at 
home for her two weeks of midwinter vacation, 
“your old age was provided for in the white- 
horse picture.” 

“It beats all,” said Miss Nancy to Uncle 
Daniel one day when she was making a visit at 
his home, “ how Van seems to take to country 
life and work. What could have possessed her 
to think she wanted to go to the city ?” 

“She just didn’t know what she wanted. 
And the most of women take to the needle or 
to the schoolroom when they have to earn a 
living ; they do n’t know they can turn to the 
farm. It was a desperate mistake my brother 
Aaron made not to train Adam’s daughters to 
run Adam’s farm. It strikes me that if they 
had been taking right hold with him, and not 
been just like children doing nothing but amu- 


430 


adam's daughters. 


sing themselves, he would have spoken to them 
about that security, and ten to one they would 
have advised him against it. Women seem to 
me mighty careful about such-like matters. And 
at just a word from one of them, Aaron would 
have refrained, for he always held that the farm 
belonged to Adam’s daughters. Besides, if 
they ’d learned to farm well, if Van, who takes 
to it in such a wonderful manner, had known 
that she could run the place, she might have 
leased it from the creditors, or some one would 
have bought it to rent to her.” 

“ Do you think she could have done it ?” 
asked Mr. Benjamin curiously. Mr. Benjamin 
was often at Uncle Daniel’s. He thought Uncle 
Daniel knew more about good stock than any 
other man in the county. 

“ She do it ! She could do anything !” cried 
Miss Nancy, and told how Van had sold her 
white-horse picture. 

“ I believe our Van could soon run the big- 
gest farm in the whole country,” said Uncle 
Daniel, “ or Myra could, either one.” 


THE RETURN OF THE AGE OF GOLD. 43 1 


CHAPTER XXVII. . 

THE RETURN OF THE AGE OF GOLD. 

• Now comes the age the Cumaean Sybil sung, 

Order from long disorder now hath sprung ; 

Astraea rules the world, the Golden Age returns. 

And for a heaven-blessed race the star of justice burns. 

VIRGIL, Fourth Eel. 

“ Farmers,” said Uncle Daniel to Mr. Benja- 
min, “ are going into politics, and they are going 
in to stay. We have neglected politics too long ; 
we Ve just run our farms and looked after the 
cows and the crops, and let other men run the 
country ; and now we mean to turn over a new 
leaf.^’ 

“ I hope, Daniel,” interposed Aunt Sara Ann 
anxiously, “ that you wont neglect the cows and 
the crops all the same.” 

He has plenty of boys to look after them!' 
said farmer Benjamin ; “ they can run the farm 
and he can run politics.” 

“ That wont do,” said Aunt Sara Ann ; “ boys 
are apt to take after their fathers, and if Daniel 
neglects the farm he ’s likely to see it neglected 
all around. Though the boys are good boys as 
one need wish to see.” 

“ Do n’t fret, Sara Ann,” said her husband ; 


432 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


“ I sha’ n’t neglect the farm. I ’ve got my bread 
and butter out of it too many years for that, and 
besides I love it. What is to be done is to see 
that the farmers get a fair return for their work ; 
they do n’t get it now and they get discouraged.” 

After all,” said Mr. Benjamin, “all the 
money comes out of the earth, and the miner 
and the farmer get it out. The rest of them 
manipulate the products, and manage it so that 
the miner and the farmer, who are the true pro- 
ducers, get very little, and the manufacturers get 
the much.” 

“ It ’s time we levelled up a bit,” said the 
printer Milbury.” 

“ I ’ve thought it over more than a little 
lately,” said Uncle Daniel, “and it’s time for a 
change, that’s clear. The rings and the bro- 
kers and the hoarders either get too big a share 
or keep too much out of circulation. There are 
too many corners, too many trusts and syndicates 
and combinations, too many big corporations, 
crowding down individuals, too high freight 
charges ; we can’t get our wares to market.” 

“For that matter,” said the printer, “that 
should be remedied by the railroads being owned 
by the Government, as they are in Italy, and 
used for the general advantage of the country 
and to pay expenses, and not to create million- 


aires. 


THE RETURN OF THE AGE OF GOLD. 433 

The printer, being the most literary person 
in the Milbury family, was accepted as author- 
ity, and his father replied to his oracle, “No 
doubt you’re right. It strikes me that’s so. 
There are too many middlemen also, and they 
want all there is to be got out of products. We 
farmers are a patient set of men ; we ’ve been 
busy, and when we were not busy it was because 
we were dead tired. We have just attended to 
the plough, and have let the politicians and the 
rest of the world run matters to suit themselves 
without regard to us. Now we mean to have 
our say in public affairs.” 

“ That we will !” cried a sixteen-year-old Mil- 
bury, who felt more mature and important than 
he ever would again, no matter how long he 
lived. “We Grangers mean to knock ’em all 
flat!” 

His father and Mr. Benjamin glanced covert- 
ly at each other and smiled ; but Uncle Daniel 
was too wise a man to mortify the lad’s self-as- 
sertion and budding manhood. 

The Milbury family were keeping the Fourth 
of July by a private festival. Uncle Daniel had 
proposed it and all the others had heartily fallen 
in with the idea. Affairs were going better at 
last for Uncle Daniel; the mortgage was paid; 
money was standing to his account in the bank 
and not being borrowed from the bank; the 
28 


Adam’s Daughters. 


434 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


boys were coming on and giving more effective 
help. 

Uncle Daniel’s remarks might have suggested 
worse not better circumstances ; but here were 
these boys, whom he wished to keep on the 
farm, and how should he strengthen their love 
of farming if not by ameliorating the condition 
of the farmer? He concluded to do what he 
could to make the farm pay better and to make 
farm-life cheery. He took another newspaper, 
subscribed to a magazine, bought one boy a vio- 
lin and another a flute, and did not disdain to 
buy a new game or to inaugurate a family festi- 
val. In fact Uncle Daniel and Aunt Sara Ann, 
now that the gray began to touch their heads, 
had come to “ piping times of peace and here 
they were out in their orchard, and though Vir- 
gil was unknown to them, they were in the 
mood of Tityre^ tu recubans^ 

When Uncle Daniel had proposed to his 
nieces a domestic celebration for July 4th, the 
maids had promptly declared that they would 
have a fine dinner, and no one should prepare 
it but themselves and Hannah ; grandma. Miss 
Nancy, mamma, and Aunt Sara Ann were to 
put on their best gowns and sit at ease. More- 
over, the table should be spread in the orchard, 
easy-chairs should be carried thither, the boys 
should stretch out a canopy lest by any means 


THE RETURN OF THE AGE OF GOLD. 435 

the sun should touch the tables, and there 
should be decorations of flags, bunting, festoons, 
and flowers. The boys received these sugges- 
tions with enthusiasm. Uncle Daniel invited 
Mr. Benjamin and two or three of his friends, 
and the girls retired into corners and discussed 
what viands should be prepared. 

‘‘We shall have ice-cream,” said Van. 

“ O Rachel Van Meter Milbury ! You can’t 
do it unless you buy or borrow a freezer !” cried 
Myra. 

“ Buy one ! What extravagant notions you 
cultivate. Borrow? Not T ; the Scripture is, 
‘ The borrower is servant to the lender,’ and I 
believe it. Uncle Daniel has plenty of ice ; I 
shall take a three-quart long pail for a freezer, 
and put the cream in it, and use one of the big 
milking-pails for a tub, and you’ll see I shall 
freeze it fine.” 

“ Let us have nothing hot but tea and coffee, 
and we will have roast chickens and boiled 
tongue and ham cold, nice salads, rice in moulds, 
pickles, jelly, tarts, cream-pies, cheeses, biscuits, 
cake, and ice-cream. Oh what a spread ! Van, 
don’t you wish we could invite all those poor 
girls that used to work for Uncle James?” 

“ Indeed I do, and all the rest of the shop- 
girls from the city. What a treat that lovely 
orchard would be to them !” 


43^ ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

The dinner being planned, Van and Myra 
took a day to go to Uncle Daniel’s and make their 
cake and pies, Miss Nancy and mamma Mil- 
bnry undertaking to see to affairs in garden and 
poultry-yard at the little brown house. Grand- 
ma and Aunt Sara Ann were banished to the 
front porch, and provided with white aprons 
and knitting. 

‘‘ Sit there,” said Van, as she established them 
in two chairs, “ and see if you cannot look like 
two nice little ladies, while Myra and I are 
kitchen maids.” 

Grandma and Aunt Sara Ann smiled at each 
other, as from the big kitchen came whiffs of 
delicious odors as from Araby the blest, and 
borne along with the currents of fragrance came 
Van’s voice singing, 

“ Do not look at life’s long sorrow, 

See how short each moment’s pain ; 

God will help thee for to-morrow, 

Every day begin again.” 

‘‘ Dear children,” said grandma, “ they have 
come through a deal of trouble, but I reckon 
they have had some good to harvest out of it. 
I make account, Sara Ann, that in the next 
world, when sheaves are counted up, the most 
and the greatest will be from fields of sorrow 
and pain ; joy very often, it appears to me, makes 
only light crops. Those girls were always nice 


THE RETURN OF THE AGE OF GOLD. 437 

girls, but they are now worth twice over what 
they were before troubles came.” 

I don’t know but they are,” said Aunt Sara 
Ann. 

The finest city caterer could not have made 
of a dinner a more shining success than Myra 
and Van, aided by Uncle Daniel’s six boys, made 
of their dinner. 

When the girls arrived with their mother and 
Miss Nancy on the morning of the Fourth, the 
boys and Hannah had already spread a sightly 
table under the orchard trees, carried out seats, 
and laid down a rug for grandma’s feet. The 
family and their guests were on the piazza when 
the maids arrived. 

“You are late !” cried Joe. 

“We had our domestic animals to feed, young 
man,” said Van, “and a swarm of bees to pro- 
vide for.” • 

“ A swarm of bees in July 
Is not worth a fly.” 

“ I intend mine shall be worth five dollars,” 
said Van serenely. 

“ How nice your new dresses look !” said Aunt 
Sara Ann, turning her nieces round and round 
and admiring the new percale gowns. “And 
you made them all yourselves ? I had no idea 
you could sew on machines so beautifully!” 

“We got that out of Uncle James, if we got 


438 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

nothing else,” said Myra ; “ observe this tucking ; 
isn’t it nice ?” 

“ Beautiful !” 

“ It is always well to get some good out of 
hard times,” said grandma, admiring her gath- 
ered descendants. 

'‘We used to quote your saying, you dear 
grandma,” said Van : “ ‘ Well, well, if the Lord 
sees fit to send me to school to affliction, Satan 
shall not hinder me of learning the best lessons 
taught there.’ ” 

“Did I say that?” said grandma. “Anyway 
it was true, if I did say it.” 

“You always say what is true,” said her son 
Daniel. “You have said hundreds of things 
that would do us all good to read over, if we had 
written them in a book ; but none of us Milburys 
are literary inclined.” 

“ Don’t let us waste time here in the house,” 
cried the boys ; “ let us go to the orchard.” 

They went to the orchard, but it is true that 
the boys were not entirely content with the 
course of affairs until the maids and the beam- 
ing Hannah had loaded the ample board with 
good things and dinner had begun. The din- 
ner was a long one, for as they ate conversation 
divided time with feasting, and it was then that 
Uncle Daniel ventilated his views of the bucolic 
situation, and announced that he should take 


THE RETURN OF THE AGE OF GOLD. 439 

the betterment of matters into his own hands and 
go into politics. 

“ I expect the people in the city thought 
themselves quite as badly off as the farmers, and 
perhaps that was really true, Miss Milbury,” said 
Mr. Benjamin to Van. 

“ Of the many poor it was very true. As to 
the rich I cannot say, for I did not meet any of 
them. Rich and poor in the city are much 
farther apart than rich and poor in the country,’' 
replied Van. 

It was a case like that of Sydney Smith’s 
two kinds of sugar in a shop-window, twopenny 
and threepenny. ‘ How they must hate one an- 
other, being so near together!’ said the wit. 
Was that it. Miss Milbury?” 

“ It seemed to me rather forgetting than ha- 
ting,” said Van. There are some who live to 
do all the good they can, and others to do all the 
evil, and some would be willing to do good to 
others, only they never see need, even if it is 
right in their path. I think though there is 
never such horrible poverty in the country as in 
the city. Country poor have food and fuel. I 
know the poor working- women of the cities are 
often short of both. I think the reason the 
working- women have so much poorer wages and 
longer hours than the men is that they don’t 
know how to combine ; they can’t strike if they 


440 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


have children crying for bread ; and then women 
W9rk against each other so.” 

I am truly sorry to hear that,” said Mr. 
Benjamin. “ How do they work against each 
other ?” 

“ I mean this way : women with homes and 
enough to live on will take some kind of work 
just to buy luxuries or ornaments ; and as they 
do not need to make a living by their work, they 
will take work very cheap, at such low rates as 
no one could live on, and that puts down the 
price of wages. We used to try to get crochet- 
work and knitting, and we found little of it and 
at low prices because a great many ladies took 
such work in at their own homes, just to make 
money for pleasure trips or Christmas presents, 
and so on. At the shop they told us of a young 
lady who worked nubias and zephyr shawls for 
two years to get money for a sealskin sacque. 
And there was another that every year earned 
enough by knitting infants’ hoods and mittens 
to take her on a trip to the seaside. Sixty dol- 
lars she earned in this knitting each year, and 
did it cheaper than the ordinary price, so that 
they would prefer to give work to her. Present- 
ly the shopkeeper began to feel that he must 
have all his work at that rate, but it was a star- 
vation rate to poor women.” 

“ Mother does some knitting now for the 


THE RETURN OF THE AGE OF GOLD. 44I 

city,” said Myra, “ but it is only because she has 
to do it, until we get fairly a living from our 
other work. Then she is to stop and not com- 
pete vsith folks who have to buy all they eat.” 

I read a story of a farmer’s daughter,” said 
Van, “ who took some kind of factory work at 
home. She underbid the regular hands, and as 
she had better air, better light, better food, and 
so better health, than the women in the town, she 
could do more work, and that crowded down the 
price for the starving mothers of families. But 
all she wanted of her earnings was to buy a 
black lace dress.” 

And we know of a young lady that took 
neckties to make,” said Myra. “You see we 
tried to get the ties ; we needed them dreadfully, 
for we were out of work ; but all the ties the 
firm sold were made by this one person. She 
lived with a friend and had no board or washing 
to pay for, and she taught school and had a 
salary of four hundred dollars. She made the 
ties in the evenings and Saturdays and in vaca- 
tions ; and in a year she earned seventy-five dol- 
lars. She did it for the sake of getting a long 
gold chain for her watch. But some other girls 
wanted that work, at a fair price, for bread.” 

“You make out a strong case,” said Mr. Ben- 
jamin. 

“ People should live and work on Bible prin- 


442 


ADAM'S DAUGHTERS. 


ciples,” said Aunt Sara Ann ; “ then the employ- 
ers would not wish to grind down the workers to 
prices that they know they could not live on ; 
they would remember that it is forbidden ito op- 
press the hireling in his wages,’ and women 
would help and not hinder each other ; because 
the Bible rule is, ‘ Let every one seek not his own 
but another’s good. Look not on our own 
things, but all on the things of others.’ I am 
not as good at remembering exact words as Van 
is.” 

“ But you ’ve got the spirit, Sara Ann, you ’ve 
got the spirit,” said Uncle Daniel, eager to de- 
fend his wife. 

To hear those girls talk !” said grandma, in 
a whisper to her daughter-in-law. “ Sara Ann, 
don’t you notice what I said, how much more 
thoughtful and wise they are for their troubles ?” 

“Van,” said the printer, “your work here 
shows that you are a born organizer. Why 
didn’t you stay in the city and form a Union 
and draw a big salary ? I notice that the officers 
of those organizations usually draw a salary that 
will enable them to live like the rich ones they 
attack about the wrongs of the poor ones !” 

Van laughed. “The ones who should take 
these wrongs in hand and try to right them are 
the rich and the educated, who will work for 
love and justice’s sake, and not ask to be sup- 


THE RETURN OF THl^ AGE OF GOLD. 443 

ported by the poor while they tell how poor 
they are. To the Christian workers we must 
look for righted wrongs.” 

“They all want to make something out of 
what they do,” said Joe, “except those that do 
the work for love of God and man.” 

“ They ’ll make, but not here or now per- 
haps,” said his brother. “ I was struck with two 
lines in an editorial I was setting up the other 
day : 

“ ‘ Love soweth here with toil and tears. 

But the harvest-time of love is there.’ ” 

But now the dinner-table was in a devastated 
state that showed that the dessert course must 
be brought in. Hannah and Joe carried away 
the baked meats and other solids — at least the 
remnants thereof. The printer rose, took a little 
green branch of cedar, and using it as a crumb- 
brush, dusted off the cloth with skill. “ It is that 
you may remember me liberally at dessert,” he 
whispered to his cousins. Myra and Van went 
to the house, and presently returned, Myra car- 
rying a server of spoons and saucers, Joe and 
Hannah bearing between them the improvised 
freezer, Van laden with a mammoth cake. Ap- 
plause greeted the procession. 

Van speedily dished out her ice-cream, and 
Myra and Hannah passed it around. As Van 
bent over the freezer and scooped out liberal 


444 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


portions of the luscious compound, a sudden 
memory of that terrible morning when, fasting 
and despairing, she went to the Young Women’s 
Christian Association, came to her. She fairly 
caught her breath — it seemed so terrible and so 
real again. But an oriole sang above her head, 
the breeze stirred through the apple boughs, 
plenty smiled all about her, the voices of family 
and friends sounded in her ears. She came back 
to her present with a sigh and a start and 
thanked God for the better days. She turned to 
the table: the printer had taken out his note- 
book and was reading to grandma : 

“ I have known one word hang star-like 
O’er a dreary waste of years, 

And it only shone the brighter 
• Looked at through a mist of tears, 

While a weary wanderer gathered 
Hope and heart on life’s dark way 
By its faithful promise shining 
■Clearer day by day.” 


FROM STORM TO SHINE. 


445 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

FROM STORM TO SHINE. 

“A gladness be their own 
Unspeakable, and to the world unknown ! 

Such as from childhood’s morning-land of dreams, 
Remembered, faintly gleams.” 

Miss Nancy came out into the garden where 
Van, Mrs. Milbury, and Tommy, the boy, were at 
work. “ I Ve been over to the village,” she said. 

It beats all how I am learning to walk. I feel 
just as if I had gone back fifty years, when I get 
a sun-bonnet on my head and can walk along 
the roadsides. I remember how happy I felt 
when I could run off barefooted to school, along 
roadsides where the dandelions lay bright as so 
many twenty-dollar gold-pieces. We had a little 
schoolhouse painted red, and the seats and 
benches were blue. Dear me! What good 
times those were !” 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Milbury, “and yet I don’t 
pine for the old times back. I Ve got where I ’d 
rather go on. The parents and friends are near- 
er now, at the end of the journey, than they 
would be on the return. I often think of that 
verse Teddie used to sing — 


446 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ ‘ Nearer my Father’s home 

Where the many mansions be, 

Nearer the great white throne, 

Nearer the jasper sea.’ ” 

“That's SO,” said Miss Nancy, “and I reckon 
the time do n’t seem half so long to them that 's 
gone and got to heaven as it has to us, toiling 
and moiling here below. And I can tell you, if 
ever there was a grateful woman I 'm one, that 
the dear Lord has brought me back to end my 
days where I began them — in the country. Oh 
I 'm so contented ! I just could n’t have asked 
anything better. It used to seem to me hot 
Sundays, when I ’d sit in 8 Aspen Square breath- 
ing bad smells and hearing a continual row, that 
in all the Scripture the verse I could understand 
best was, ‘ And David longed and said. Oh that 
one would give me to drink of the water of the 
well of Bethlehem which is beside the gate !’ 
I ’m afraid I have longed more for a draught out 
of a bucket instead of a hydrant than for the 
water of life, and more for the country than for 
heaven !” 

“ That is the way we humans feel,” said Van, 
busy with her celery plants, for she had set up 
several thriving rows of celery. “The thing 
that is near looks so large to us, even though it 
is much less than what is far away ; and it is so 
hard for us to realize what is always unseen.” 


FROM STORM TO SHINE. 


447 


“ Well, the Lord has had long patience with 
me, as a mother with a cross, petty child, and 
here I am in my old age comforted. ‘ As one 
whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort 
you, and ye shall be comforted,’ isn’t that fine?” 
said Miss Nancy. Miss Nancy moved up the 
celery row after Van, who had moved on in her 
work, and Mrs. Milbury took comfort for herself 
in looking at her older friend and thinking, “At 
even-time it shall be light.” And it is well when 
the sun sets clear ! 

“ Van,” said Miss Nancy, when she reached 
the young woman, “ I went to the postoffice at 
the village just now, and I got a letter from Mrs. 
Linsdale. She says Delia is such a good girl, so 
biddable, faithful, and truthful, that she likes to 
have her with the children. She is careful to do 
exactly what Mrs. Linsdale says, and that makes 
up for lack of experience. They are going to 
the seaside about the middle of June, and Mrs. 
Linsdale wants to take Delia there to keep her 
for the summer, and Delia likes the idea very 
much. She said Delia asked her to tell me that 
she saw Sadie, and she is still living in the coun- 
try and doing well.” 

“ That ’s good,” said Van. “ I am glad Delia 
is contented, and living at Mrs. Linsdale ’s will 
be the best thing she can do. I do not know of 
any place she could find about here.” 


448 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


Yes ; I ’m glad too. I always mean to look 
out for Delia, as far as I can, but just now I 
could n’t see any place for her. I ’m studying 
over a good many things. I ’m slow to settle 
myself, for this move I make now will be the 
last of my life, and I ’ve got to live and die by 
it.” 

Do n’t hurry,” said Van ; “ you ’re very well 
off as you are.” 

What I want for a while. Van, is to board 
here with you, and I ’ll pay five dollars a 
week.” 

But, Miss Nancy, your board doesn’t begin 
to be worth that ! And think how much you do ! 
Why you work in the house and in the garden 
nearly all the time.” 

That chance to potter round and do what I 
like is just what I ’m paying for,” said Miss 
Nancy. “ I would n’t be happy if I had to keep 
hands off and stay in my own room. I ’d pine. 
Here I can do just what I like, and cook old- 
fashioned dishes such as my mother used to 
cook. You see. Van, I have the money to pay 
board, and I should feel powerful mean and de- 
pendent if I did n’t pay. I want you to let me 
have the room over the living-room, and I ’ll 
pay five dollars a week, and you ’ll let me work 
when I feel like it. After such a busy life as 
mine I couldn’t sit down idle.” 


FROM STORM TO SHINE. 


449 


‘‘All right,” said Van, “ only it makes me feel 
sort of mean to take it when I know it isn’t 
worth it. Why, after old Molly comes and does 
the washing, you do nearly all the ironing. It 
really is n’t fair !” 

“ I always did feel pretty proud of my iron- 
ing ; it is work I like. I thought we would n’t 
say anything about the past three months, only 
I sent Mrs. Arden a check for forty dollars on 
your borrowed money and here ’s the receipt ; 
and so almost half is paid off now.” 

“ Miss Nancy,” said Van, rising from her 
kneeling position by the celery, “ I mean much 
more than ‘ thank you ’ to you ; let us talk busi- 
ness. I ’m thinking of hiring that acre next our 
garden. I want more room for fowls — I think 
I ’d find them profitable ; and more room for 
onions — onions are a very paying crop ; and on 
top of my new hen-house I could build a little 
tower for pigeons — squabs and pigeons bring a 
good price in the market.” 

“ By all means get the acre,” said Miss Nan- 
cy ; “I like to see how much you can do.” 

She wandered off and stood by the bee-hives. 
Van had ten bee-hives now and they brought 
her five dollars a year each, and she told Uncle 
Daniel that after the first three hives they had 
never seemed to cost her anything. 

“Yes,” said Uncle Daniel, “you are one of 

Adam ’8 Daughters. 29 


450 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

the folks who can go among bees without being 
hurt or afraid, and you do n’t leave your bees to 
freeze or starve of a winter. You reap as you 
sow, with bees as with other creatures and 
affairs. ‘The bountiful eye shall be blessed,’ 
and who gives good measure gets good meas- 
ure ; it ’s a sort of a law of the universe. Van, 
as I sat reading the Book yesterday, it struck 
me that as Proverbs had been called the ‘Young 
Man’s Book,’ so it might be called the ‘ Farm- 
er’s Book ’ and the ‘ Business Man’s Book.’ I ’ll 
never forget what Aaron said to me when he 
was dying : ‘ Oh, Daniel, I wish I ’d understood 
that the Bible was as good to run your business 
by as your soul by.’ ” 

“ Why can’t I take counsel by the Book then 
for this next acre ?” asked Van, laughing. “ It 
says, ‘ She seeth a field and buyeth it.’ In my 
case it would be ‘hireth it.’ If I hire that acre 
I can keep ducks and geese down on the brook 
that runs across the northeast side.” 

“ It just sets me up to see what a strong, 
sensible, self-reliant woman our Van is,” said 
farmer Daniel to Sara Ann ; “ she ’s been home 
from the city now two years and a little better, 
and a’n’t her place a picter, and a’n’t she a 
picter ?” 

“And she is jUvSt as much of a lady,” said 
Aunt Sara Ann, “as she was when she was do- 


FROM STORM TO SHINE. 


451 


ing nothing but help her mother with a little 
cake -making or preserving or sweeping up a 
sitting-room or ironing her muslins. I don’t 
think anything could look more appropriate 
than Van in her stout nankeen dress fitting neat 
and easy, a big straw hat tied down, a pair of 
strong tidy boots on her feet, and leather gloves 
on her hands, busy among her bees or her poul- 
try or her vegetables and fruit, or packing up 
her mushrooms.” 

Van, for her part, had ceased to consider 
whether all this were appropriate or not. She 
had this work to do, and she did it and pros- 
pered in it. The problem before her had been 
to make a living for herself and her mother, 
and she was making it. She followed out the 
precept, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, 
do it with thy might.” 

She did not weary of her work ; like Cleo- 
patra it had “ ever new variety.” In early spring 
lettuce, bunches of radishes and onions, bundles 
of asparagus went off to market, for Van had 
established a hot-bed, and moreover started 
boxes of plants in her bee-room and kitchen ; 
then came strawberries and peas and beets; 
then the rush of summer garden-vegetables, and 
the mushrooms, and spring-chickens, while eggs 
began to be sent off in April, and fruit and 
fowls were despatched to the market in October 


452 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


and November. In fact Van’s poultry became 
one of the great sights of the neighborhood. 
Van said the boy Tommy was a magician, and 
enchanted her poultry-yard to do marvels. Van 
kept all manner of fowls, Cochins, Brahmas, Leg- 
horns, Spanish, Shanghais, and good old-fash- 
ioned barn-door birds. The entire family, Mrs. 
Milbury, Miss Nancy, Van, and Tommy, were 
wont to go to the yard to watch the evening 
feeding and going to roost. They were never 
tired of laughing at the pecking and crowding 
and change of mind and evident misunder- 
standings amid the feathered community at 
night, which changed to amicable clucking, 
crowing, scratching, calling, drinking, and shar- 
ing of grain in the morning. Peacocks, gui- 
neas, turkeys, ducks, geese — these last. Van said, 
were her most profitable birds, hardy, prolific, 
good mothers, their feathers always command- 
ing a fair price. Van used to wonder why, 
when Adam and Eve had plenty of birds, flow- 
ers, and fruit in Eden, they had not been satis- 
fied. But then she remembered the time had 
been when she was not satisfied herself. 

Now she loved all these living things, even 
the two or three pigs fattening and grunting 
behind the barn. As for “ Primrose,” the cow 
which she had raised and petted from a calf to 
be a sleek, fat, gentle, cream-producing beast — 


FROM STORM TO SHINE. 


453 

Miss Nancy denying that Primrose gave a drop 
less rich than cream — they all wondered why it 
happened that Primrose took only second prize, 
and not first prize, at the county fair, Mr. Benja- 
min’s Bouncing Bet taking the first. 

At that county fair Van had made a brave 
show, with peanuts, mushrooms, silk-worms, cel- 
ery, and honey, products not general in her 
county. 

Ah there was no question now about making 
a living. Van looked over her domain and re- 
membered what Isaac, the gentle Oriental far- 
mer, had said, “ The smell of a field which God 
hath blessed.” 

Van had her debt nearly paid, and Mrs. Mil- 
bury had a new cashmere gown. Mrs. Arden 
came from the city and paid a three days’ visit, 
and she and Uncle Daniel’s family took wonder- 
fully to each other, and late into the night she 
and grandma sat talking of the marvellous ways 
in which the Lord leads his people. No doubt 
this will be largely the theme for the redeemed 
in glory. 

These months and years of daily rural toil 
were not years of mental decadence to Van Mil- 
bury. In the evenings, or during the noonday 
two hours of rest, from half-past eleven to half- 
past one, she read much. Mr. Lowell brought 
her books constantly, and it was to Van’s ad van- 


454 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


tage that she had rather few books, valuable, 
read and re-read, than many weaker books 
carelessly skimmed and as carelessly for- 
gotten. 

It was so easy now to meditate during the 
morning on what had been read the previous 
evening, or during the afternoon on what had 
been read at noon. 

When in the city she had gone home late 
from the Ready Made Emporium, or from the 
Fashionable Dress and Mantua Making, she had 
stumbled with sheer weariness, had been afraid 
of her shadow, her head had ached, she saw only 
the thousand lamps of the city, not the lamps of 
heaven. Now when she went out in the even- 
ing, to and from the church, or Uncle Daniel’s, 
or to pace her garden walks, she could think — 

“ Look how the floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ; 

There ’s not the smallest orb which thou beholdest 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims ; 

Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 

But, while this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it.” 

“ Happy is he who makes two blades of grass 
grow where but one grew before,” says Souves- 
tre ; and that was not all idle and boorish talk of 
Tennyson’s “ Northern Farmer,” when he took 
comfort in, “ I stubbed Thornaly Waste.” It is 


FROM STORM TO SHINE. 


455 

worth doing indeed, to fill the waste places of 
the world, physical and moral, with beauty in- 
stead of burning. 

Van and Myra, when they went to the city, 
would have felt that they were fortunate if they 
had found and kept places as clerks or seam- 
stresses at six or seven dollars a week. This 
would have been larger than ordinary wages, 
and beyond their probabilities as having no ex- 
perience. But, granted that Uncle James had 
been a helpful uncle, and by his means this for- 
tune had come to them, what then ? 

Each night, after ten hours a day standing in 
a store, they might have climbed wearily to a 
boarding-house attic, or hall bedroom, which 
cost them four or five dollars a week. They 
might have lived there, year in and out, with- 
out any vacation, their wages stopped for every 
day of illness, almost too exhausted on Sabbath 
to go to church and appreciate the services, their 
constitutions failing from hastily -eaten break- 
fasts, and dinners taken often in haste, standing 
in the hot, close air of a store ; their dispositions 
might have become dull and captious and mor- 
bid from having so little brightness in their 
lives and seeing so few who took any interest 
in their fates. 

Instead of this, see Van and Myra in Myra’s 
summer holiday, leaning in the cool of the July 


456 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


evening on their garden gate. Their mother’s 
flower-garden blazes with bloom about them; 
gladiolas lift up their green swords and vivid 
flame ; the coreopsis burns in velvet and gold ; 
the crimson cockscomb flaunts beside the splen- 
dor of the tiger-lily; the white rose leans to- 
wards the red rose and they mingle their per- 
fume ; the hawks-moth flies about the clematis 
and the honeysuckles. To the left lies the vege- 
table-garden, which has made them such good 
returns ; behind the house are the strawberry- 
beds, the rows of currants and raspberries, that 
have filled for them so many baskets and 
brought them money to conclude paying their 
debt; everywhere sunflowers spread out their 
gorgeous shields. Behind the small fruit-acre, in 
the great poultry-yard, the fowls, and higher up 
the pigeons, are making an amazing fuss about 
getting to bed ; going down the road, behold the 
donkey-cart conducted by the joyful Tommy, 
and loaded with baskets of mushrooms, the first 
of the .season, early and high-priced. To the 
right another acre where the asparagus-bed now 
waves feathery plumes dotted with red ber- 
ries; the long celery-trenches show solid lines 
of dark green above the well - banked earth ; 
Miss Nancy paces up and down her favorite 
walk before the hives, and true to a legend of 
her childhood, in a low recitative “tells the 


FROM STORM TO SHINE. 


457 


bees” the fortunes of the day. Mrs. Milbury 
sits under the vine-covered porch, knitting silk 
stockings for a baby-linen warehouse. Here 
was peace, plenty, industry, rest, hope, the daily 
life, the sweet mystifications and surprises of 
household love. 

“ I like the school very well, but I am not 
such an enthusiast in teaching as Teddie was,” 
said Myra. I find myself taking more interest 
in the farm and garden work near me than in 
enterprising new methods of instruction, though 
I hope I am more than an average teacher ; I 
try to be. But what I would like best. Van, is 
to be able to live at home where mother is and 
do my work there. If we could afford a larger 
place which we could run to profit, so that both 
of us could be occupied upon it, I should like 
that. I always was a mother-girl. All the Wal- 
lace Cranshaws in creation could not have per- 
suaded me as far from my mother as Nebraska ! 
Not but what Teddie loves mother as much as I 
do. Were there ever nicer letters than she 
writes us every week? But she and I were 
made for a different life. The life I am made 
for is to stay with my mother as long as she 
lives, and I hope she will live till I am old enough 
to die too.” 

“ Mother is so well and cheerful now,” said 


Van. 


458 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


“ I hope Teddie will be able to come home 
next year at least,” said Myra; “she has been 
gone two years, and we cannot go to see her. 
It would cost too much for three of us, and I 
cannot lose my winter school, and you are the 
busiest in the summer. Wallace is prospering 
so Teddie could easily come next .summer.” 

“ I think she will,” said Van ; “ I am writing 
to her about it.” 

“ What do you suppose Miss Nancy is tell- 
ing the bees? And what do you suppose she 
means to do with her money? I don’t think 
she is a woman to hoard her money.” 

“ She seems so contented here, I think she 
nearly forgets that she has that money, except 
as she pays her little expenses, her board and 
buys her clothing. I do n’t see but what she can 
live right here with us as long as she lives ; and 
really she has seemed to grow young again out 
here in the country. She has a pretty good time. 
She spends days with grandma and with her 
crony. Miss Prudy Steele ; she goes to Mr. Low- 
ell’s for a day or two at a time, and the chil- 
dren call her ‘ Aunt Nancy.’ She takes no end 
of comfort in the missionary society, the prayer- 
meeting, and her class in the Sunday-school. 
But I ’ll tell you, Myra, now I think of it, I ’m 
going to take time for my Young Women’s 
Christian Association work. When I think what 


FROM STORM TO SHINE. 


459 

the Association did for us at that dreadful time, 
sending Mrs. Arden to us and giving us hope 
and courage, I feel as if I cannot do enough for 
it. If ever I get where I can, I shall give it a 
hundred dollars a year.” 

It was late in the afternoon of the Fourth of 
July, and Van and Myra were sitting alone in 
the window of the little brown house. Myra 
was finishing a dress which she was to wear at 
the coming Sunday-school picnic, and Van had 
just come in from inspecting the chickens, bees, 
cows, and sunflowers in her own little kingdom. 
They were talking of the old days and of the 
work that had come to them, and speculated 
freely, in girlish fashion, on what the future 
would bring them. They were to know sooner 
than they had anticipated, at least as far as the 
near future was concerned. Suddenly a sound 
of horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels was heard 
outside, and Uncle Daniel, with beaming face, 
called from his seat, “ Come, girls, quick ! a 
Fourth of July picnic for you ! It is not too late 
yet for us to celebrate the day and bring it to a 
close with a festive season.” Soon they were 
seated in the carriage, and Uncle Daniel set the 
horses off at a round pace. On they drove, and 
after a circuit of a mile they came in sight of the 
spot dearest of all to them. There was the be- 


460 ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 

loved old home, Poplar Rise, and the great gate 
was open where carriages entered, and promptly 
into the gate the horses turned. 

But what in the world ! The well-known 
portico, with its climbing roses and its honey- 
suckles, was crowded. There in the rocking- 
chair sat grandma in her state black silk, her 
white crepe cap, and almost white hair. There 
sat mamma Milbury, just where she had sat six 
years before, when Aunt Harriet Proctor had 
complained to her that the “ Milbury maids ” 
knew so little that was really practical. There 
stood Miss Nancy, in a cap with a purple bow 
such as her soul delighted in. On the step of 
the porch stood Aunt Sara Ann in her best, cry- 
ing what, from the looks of the rest, must be 
joyful tears. Hannah was visible and radiant in 
the hallway ; as for boys, Uncle Daniel’s six — 
who really looked like sixty, they made them- 
selves so numerous darting here and there, 
decorated the steps, the gravel-path, and the 
lawn. 

“Welcome home. Van and Myra, welcome 
home,” said Miss Nancy as she came forward to 
meet the girls. 

“ Is n’t this a grand surprise ?” cried the boys. 
“Van what do you think of this?” 

The girls, utterly bewildered, looked from 
one to another of the group for an explanation. 


FROM STORM TO SHINE. 461 

“ Miss Nancy has bought Poplar Rise,” said 
Mrs. Milbury. 

Yes, I ’ve bought it,” said the beaming Miss 
Nancy ; “ I Ve bought it for my girls Van and 
Myra; I always meant you should have Mr. 
Dotter’s picture, or the price of it. Don’t you 
remember the night I let it fall and broke the 
frame ? Was n’t that a happy break ! I ’ve 
been figuring round to get this place since ever 
I moved out to live with you, but we only 
brought the folks to terms and signed the pa- 
pers a week ago. That same day I made my 
will, leaving all I shall die possessed of to Van 
and Myra.” 

“ Oh you best Miss Nancy !” cried Van. 

“Your mother and grandmother are going to 
live here,” said Miss Nancy. “ Hannah has come 
back.” 

“ And what will I do, pray tell?’* cried Aunt 
Sara Ann. “ One-half of the time is all any of 
you can have grandma !” 

“ Do you see how they are all disputing who 
shall have the most of grandma’s company?” 
said Uncle Daniel. “Think how well it is to 
live so that when we are old we are honored and 
loved and wanted. The Scripture says, ‘ A hoary 
head is a crown of honor if it be found in the 
way of righteousness.’ It is by living righteous- 
ly that one gets old happily.” 


ADAM’S DAUGHTERS. 


462 

“ Myra,” cried Van, “ come on, let us go up 
to the garret !” Away they dashed, and Uncle 
Daniel informed the company that “Adam’s 
daughters were as much girls as ever they 
were !” 

“ Van ! were n’t you surprised !” exclaimed 
Myra, when the sunny garret was reached and 
the window set wide open. 

“ I never was so surprised in my life,” said 
Van. 

“ To think that we knew nothing of it !” pro- 
tested Myra ; “ and Miss Nancy has just told me 
that she has a buggy for us, and a thousand dol- 
lars have been spent in furnishing the house, and 
Mrs. Linsdale and Mrs. Arden bought the fur- 
niture. We are to live here right away. The 
bees and live stock from our little brown house 
are to be brought up here, and we are to look 
after that place and its produce until the lease is 
out next spring. Ben is to live here and help us 
run Poplar Rise farm ; the three younger boys 
all take to farming and are enough to help Uncle 
Daniel. Ned and Joe have an offer to start a 
paper over in the village next spring ; stock is 
being subscribed for it. Did you ever see any- 
thing so good and beautiful as our coming back 
to the old home, and mother and grandmother 
being settled at the old Milbury farm ?” 

“ I hope father and Uncle Aaron know and 


FROM STORM TO SHINE. 463 

are glad about this in heaven,” said Van with 
shining eyes. 

“ Do n’t you suppose they have enough to do 
up there, enough for all eternity, admiring the 
ways the Lord manages affairs and leads peo- 
ple?” said Myra. “One thing is sure, he has 
not forgotten Adam’s daughters.” 








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